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## LEAN diversity management in practice: The multi-functionality of questions as a resource to ensure understanding, participation and procedural compliance in a diverse workplace

Louise Tranekjær Roskilde University

louiset@ruc.dk

Abstract: Th is  paper  explores  the  way  that  team  managers  in  an  industrial laundry facility use questions in weekly whiteboard meetings to simultaneously manage  the  diversity  and  potential  language  diffi culties  of  the  employees and  the  LEAN  based  management  goals  of  improved  production  through employee  participation.  Th e  paper  argues  that  the  multi-functionality  of questions provides a resource for balancing for the competing goals of securing intersubjectivity and progressivity in the brief and yet essential meetings, and that this management has both aff  ective and epistemic dimensions.

## 1.  Introduction:  Questions  as  a  resource  for  diversity  management  and LEAN management

Th is paper explores the use and function of questions in a workplace setting from  a  conversation  analytical  perspective  (See  also  Graf,  Dionne,  and Spranz-Fogazy, 2020 ; Mayes, 2020 ; Worsøe and Jensen, 2020 in this volume), looking at how they are used as management resources within a production setting  in  Denmark,  namely  an  industrial  laundry  facility.  In  this  facility, 80% of the employees in production come from a range of other countries than Denmark and speak only little Danish, whereas management employees are  predominantly  ethnically  Danish.  Given  the  linguistic,  cultural  and professional diversity of the employees in this production site, a central part of daily management is securing understanding and intersubjectivity among managers and employees. Th e offi cial language used in this workplace is Danish and this creates some challenges, specifi  cally during the weekly whiteboard meetings held between team leaders and team employees, who similarly have, respectively, a Danish and a migrant background. Th ese meetings form the key site for team leaders to discuss challenges and goals of production as well as  providing a space for establishing intersubjectivity and agreement about workplace  procedures  and  regulations.  While  other  spaces  of  interaction would open up for interaction between employees and management during the day, the noise within the workplace and the high-speed type of manual labor carried out mean that there is little opportunity for more lengthy discussions about issues of production on site. Furthermore, employees within the teams are to a large extent physically dispersed in diff  erent laundry 'stations' with little opportunity for discussing ideas and problems with more than perhaps one or two other colleagues. Th is adds to the importance of weekly white board meetings  as  potential  sites  of  effi cient  information  exchange  and  dialogue within the team. As the whiteboard meetings are brief and involve many items on the agenda they are case-in-point exemplary of how interactions involve the continual management of the opposing goals of achieving intersubjectivity and progressivity (Heritage, 2007; see also Mayes, 2020 in this volume). As questions  are  prevalently  used  by  team  leaders  as  a  resource  for  achieving these interactional goals, the paper addresses the following research question: How are questions used as resources for the diversity management strategies of team leaders in whiteboard meetings?

Studies of diversity management (DM) typically focus on issues related to the implementation, translation and eff  ects of diversity management as an ideology and a declaration of intent within corporations (Boxenbaum, 2006; Holvino and Kamp, 2009). Th is tendency stems from the ideological rooting of DM, which grew out of discussions about affi rmative action in the United States  during  the  1980s.  Th e  backcloth  of  instantiating  DM  as  a  corporate goal was in this way an equal opportunities agenda that sought to ensure that all  employees  within  a  company  were  given  equal  opportunities  and  equal treatment  rather  than  being  institutionally  sanctioned  on  grounds  of  race, gender,  sexuality  and  disabilities  (Özbilgin  and  Tatli,  2011).  Th is  inclusive aspect is clear in the defi  nition of diversity management off  ered by Gilbert and Ivancevich as ' a voluntary organizational program designed to create greater inclusion of all individuals into informal social networks and formal company programs . ' (Gilbert and Ivancevich, 1999).

Another strand of DM studies have taken a slightly diff  erent perspective on  diversity  management,  informed  by  discussions  about  inclusion  and integration of migrant employees in various companies and the labor market more generally (Tatli, 2011). Th e emphasis of many of these studies is how everyday work-practices of employees and managers can work to marginalize or include minority employees (Holck, 2016). Th ese studies typically focus on the notion of inclusion and illuminate how it is either facilitated or potentially limited by managers and employees as part of the daily work or as a result of the structural organization of workplaces and institutions. Many of these studies  are  based  on  ethnographic  methods  of  interviews  and  participant observations  and  seek  to ' follow diversity  around '  (Ahmed,  2012)  in organizations in order to reveal implicit processes of inclusion and exclusion (Holck, 2018), sometimes involving action research as a means to improve conditions for marginalized employees and increase workplace integration. Both strands of studies pursue an interest in how DM functions as part of the practices of organizations and companies and the consequences that DM initiatives have for employees and organizations.

Inclusion as an organizational and managerial goal is, however, not merely accentuated  because  of  the  diversity  of  employees,  it  is  also  a  key  tenet  in LEAN management ideology (Fujimoto, 1999; Inamizu, Fukuzawa, Fujimoto, Shintaku, and Suzuki, 2014), which was originally developed in the Japanese car  industry  and  has  infl  uenced  the  management  and  structuring  of  work in  many  parts  of  the  world  since  the  beginning  of  the  millennium.  LEAN emphasizes, to a varying degree, the need for bottom-up input from employees on how to increase and improve production. In this particular factory the need for bottom-up input from employees was particularly salient and as will be shown in this paper this manifests itself clearly in the way that meetings are carried out and also, in questioning practices of team leaders. When questions are used in team meetings as part of strategies of inclusion this manifests a paradoxical conversion of two diff  erent agendas for securing the inclusion of migrant employees. On the one hand, questions form a resource for ensuring the integration and empowerment of migrants, and on the other, they work to pursue the management agenda of ensuring the effi ciency of production.

Paradoxically, LEAN presents both a potential and a challenge in terms of  diversity  management  in  the  sense  that  it  on  the  one  hand  presents an  opportunity  for  organized  cultural  encounters  and  dialogue  between management  and  employees  in  the  workplace  (Christiansen,  Galal,  and Hvenegård-Lassen,  2017)  and  on  the other hand, such meetings are potentially challenged by diff  erences in cultural and linguistic resources. In other  words,  while  the  goal  of  management  is  increased  participation  and dialogue about production effi ciency and improvement, the mutuality and coconstructed sense-making between team leaders and employees can be said to be limited. Such limitation is partially due to the diffi culties of understanding and  participation  of  migrant  employees  but  also  a  result  of  team  leaders' limited  knowledge  of  how  to  best  facilitate  and  invite  such  understanding and  participation.  Th e  questions  explored  in  this  paper  in  diff  erent  ways manifest  this  challenge  of  facilitating  the  perspectives  and  participation  of migrant workers while at the same time ensuring compliance with effi cient work  procedures  as  defi  ned  by  management.  While  the  role  of  leadership and management for the implementation and long-term endurance of LEAN within an organization has lately been emphasized within literature on LEAN (Mann, 2009), only few studies illuminate the nature of such leadership. Th ose that do, pay no attention to the communicative and interactional dimensions of leadership but rather focus on developing overall guides for management (Liker  and  Convis,  2013;  Dombrowski  and  Mielke,  2013)  and  types  of leadership styles (Emiliani, 2003; Poksinska, Swartling, and Drotz, 2013).

Th is paper takes a diff  erent approach to diversity management and LEAN management by  focusing  on  the  communicative  dimension  and  exploring strategies of inclusion as 'interactional' practices that employees and managers engage in, focusing on how questions are used as an interactional resource employed by team leaders (See also Mayes, 2020 in this volume). Th is  interactional perspective is drawing on conversation analytical studies of  management,  leadership  and  meetings  (Asmus  and  Svennevig,  2009; Clift  on,  2009;  Nielsen,  2009;  Svennevig,  2011;  Svennevig  and  Hazel,  2018) focusing on the action dimension of diversity management in multilingual and multicultural  settings  (Day,  1998,  1999;  Markaki  et  al.,  2010,  Merlino, Mondada,  and  Oloff  ,  2010;  Mondada,  2012).  Th e  paper  will  focus  more specifi  cally  on  three  diff  erent  types  of  actions  related  to  strategies  of  doing diversity  management  in  practice,  namely  (1)  ensuring  understanding,  (2) participation  and  (3)  procedural  compliance  of  the  employees.  It  will  be argued, that the multifunctionality of questions provide an important resource for simultaneously performing several of these actions at once.

## 2. Th e context in question - whiteboard meetings in diverse production companies

Before investigating questions as interactional strategies for LEAN diversity management, a few words about the institutional context of the whiteboard meeting is needed as it provides the particular 'semiotic ecology' (Van Lier, 2000) and 'multimodal space' (Goodwin, 2006) that frames the production and interpretation of these questions.

As mentioned previously, the management and organization of work in most production or industrial companies such as a laundry facility is infl  uenced by  the  management ideology LEAN (Fujimoto, 1999; Inamizu et al., 2014; Toledo, Gonzalez, Lizarelli, and Pelegrino, 2019), which is an instrument to ensure the increasing effi ciency and improvement of production by working 'smarter' .  Th e  implementation  of  LEAN  has  three  central  implications  for the management of employees in organizations: 1) A team-based workplace organization where individual teams are responsible for particular production goals under supervision and guidance by an appointed team leader, who is also working as part of the daily production. 2) An increased emphasis on weekly meetings between employees and a team leader or production leader, inspired by the Kaizen meeting, which is a type of meeting used in the Japanese Toyota car factories with the aim of securing a continual improvement (the meaning of Kaizen in Japanese) of production through generating input from employees. 3) Increased emphasis on improving production effi ciency through employee participation and input. In diverse workplaces such as the laundry facility in question, these management conditions present both potentials and problems for migrant workers. On the one hand, the frequency of meetings and the teambased management structure presents an opportunity for migrant workers to have more contact and interaction with management and other employees within the team. On the other hand, the format of the meetings, that is the brief, goal-oriented and formally structure, potentially presents a barrier for migrant  workers  to  understand  what  is  going  on,  let  alone  contribute  and participate as intended.

Th e production was organized in 5 diff  erent teams that each had a team leader. Th e fi  rst and primary topic on the agenda was typically the production levels that were tracked and visually represented on a 'KPI' (Key Performance Index) chart. Other recurrent topics were ongoing challenges and problems in production as well as ideas for improvement.

Th e team meetings would all take place in the cafeteria, where whiteboards for each team were placed side by side on one of the walls, creating a space for gathering for each team. Th e team employees would sit round the table that was closest to their whiteboard, and the team leader would stand in front of the whiteboard, facing the employees.

Returning  to  the  issue  of  diversity  management  within  LEAN  based organizational  setting  one  could  say  that  while  the  ideology  of  LEAN  and Kaizen  thinking  entails  an  emphasis  on  inclusion  and  participation  of employees, the structure of the whiteboard meeting structure prevalently used in LEAN based organizations involves an 'interaction order' (Goff  man, 1981) and a 'semiotic ecology' (Due et al., 2019) that might be counterproductive to the goal of securing the inclusion and participation of migrant workers with limited Danish language skills.

In light of the diff  erent aspects of the institutional context of the whiteboard production  meeting,  the  questions  and  questioning  strategies  of  the  team leader should be understood as part of a routinized and relatively formalized practice  characterized  by  an  interaction  order  defi  ned  by  an  institutionally anchored uneven distribution of rights, status and knowledge with respect to organizational procedures and roles (Drew and Heritage, 1992). Th e team leader is the one who opens the meetings, controls the points on the agenda and determines when the various topics and meetings are to be closed down, which is an organization of roles and actions previously described in interactional studies  of  meetings.  Th is  will  be  presented  in  one  of  the  following  section discussing previous fi  ndings about questioning and questions in institutional settings.

## 3. Th e data

Th e  empirical  basis  of  this  paper  are  12  video  recordings  of  whiteboard meetings  from  4  diff  erent  workplace  teams  (sorting,  steaming,  rolling  and packing) with a varying length of 10-30 minutes. Th e recordings were made as part of a collaboration initiated by the site manager of the company, who wanted  to  improve  the  management  of  diversity  within  the  company.  Th e purpose of the research and the recordings was presented to the employees by the researcher and the site manager during a lunch break and during team meetings and consent forms were distributed to all employees with information about the project and the handling of data. Th e wording of the consent form was discussed in detail with the site manager in order to ensure that it was simple and as easy to understand as possible. Before and during the period of recording, the researcher visited the site frequently, participated in team meetings without recording, worked in the cafeteria, talked to employees and answered questions about the research. Th e team leaders played a central role in securing the trust of the employees, as they would assist in explanations about the project and the making of recordings when the researcher was not able to set up the equipment herself. Th is arrangement proved quite important, since the timing of the weekly meetings would oft  en change last minute. Th e employees were generally very enthusiastic about contributing to the project and only a few employees expressed concerns. Th ese employees were given additional explanations face to face by the researcher and all employees were told that they could decline from participating in a recording at any time. Each team has their own team leader, and around 10-15 employees in their team. Th e meetings took place in the cafeteria in front of a whiteboard placed on the wall. Th e camera was set up for each meeting facing the whiteboard and there was no opportunity for fi  lming the meeting from an angle showing the faces of the employees, which presented a limitation in terms of capturing all of the visual responses and contributions of the employees. A separate microphone was placed in the middle of the table in order to alleviate the bias caused by the placement of the video camera.

All  video  recordings  were  transcribed  using  the  soft  ware  CLAN,  based on the conventions developed by Gail Jeff  erson and described by Atkinson andand Heritage (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984). 1 On this basis, a collection of questions posed by the team leader was compiled, as these appeared to be recurrent and central to the ongoing activities in the meetings. Th e extracts used in this paper are exemplary of the diff  erent functions of the questions identifi  ed in the collection as a whole. In the following section, the defi  nition of questions used in this paper will be presented and discussed.

## 4. Questions and questioning in institutional contexts

Th e amount of studies dealing with questions is vast but elegantly summarized by Steensig and Drew (Steensig and Drew, 2008a) as constituted by 5 diff  erent sub-areas of  research  (See  also  Archer,  2020  this  volume).  Th ese  sub-areas focus  on  1)  the  linguistic  resources  employed  for  posing  questions,  2)  the various actions that questions are used to perform, 3) additional functions of questions other than eliciting information, 4) developmental aspects, that is, the issue of how we learn to ask and format questions, and fi  nally, 5) the constraining  force  of  questions,  i.e.  question  formulations  always  contain normative expectations to possible answers. Th is is in part due to their frequent position as fi  rst pair part in adjacency pairs, which is a conversation analytical term referring to action-pairs, such as question-answer, proposal-acceptance etc. where the fi  rst part of the action-pair set up a normative expectation for another participant to follow with the second part of the action-pair (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973).

Th e  present  paper  focuses  on  the  use  of  questions  within  a  work-place context  and  deals  with  some  of  the  functions  that  questions  have  besides eliciting information, taking a point of departure in an interactional defi  nition of questions, rather than a grammatical one. Following Steensig and Drew, questions are defi  ned as ' utterances which form the fi  rst pair part of a questionanswer adjacency pair. It thus denotes the interactional function. ' (Steensig and Drew, 2008a, p. 8)

An interactional approach also involves an emphasis on questions as fi  rst pair parts of an adjacency pair and not least an interpretation of their function in terms of the second pair part that follows, which is what Steensig and Drew refer to as research on the constraining force of questions. As they describe, questions  have  a  coercive  or  controlling  force  by  nature  of  the  normative expectations of a response that they entail (See also Mortensen, 2020 in this volume). Th e study of the response is in this way as important as the study of the actual posing and formatting of the question, as it indicates how hearers interpret the function of the question. In this way, while patterns have been established empirically in terms of how a particular formatting or design of a question provides for or prevents particular responses and even have particular interactional consequences beyond the next term in terms of the behavior or the other participants (Brown, 2003; Kasper and Ross, 2007; Stivers, Sidnell, and Bergen, 2018), the meaning and function of any given question is always co-constructed by the respondent and the given response.

Contrary to many studies within conversation analysis and interactional linguistics  (Drew  and  Couper-Kuhlen,  2014;  Fox  and  Heineman,  2016; Heineman,  2017;  Heritage,  2009;  Steensig  and  Heineman,  2013;  Stivers et  al.,  2018),  the  present  paper  does  not  provide  a  corpus-based  analysis of  diff  erent  types  of  question  formats  or  functions  and  their  interactional consequences.  Rather,  it  contributes  to  these  studies  by  pointing  to  how the  multi-functionality  of  questions  can  be  used  as  a  resource  in  diverse institutional  contexts  that  demand  a  simultaneous  orientation  towards  a diversity amongst the participants and the potential respondents, in terms of institutional roles, language profi  ciency, and work-place knowledge. Drawing on previous studies of questions, as well as studies of directive utterances (such as commands, orders, requests, instructions, advice and proposals) the paper points to the grey zones between these phenomena. It is argued, that in some cases the power, or the 'performative force' (Steensig and Drew, 2008a) of a question or a proposals is exactly its multi-functionality and the ambiguity for respondents in determining whether it is one or the other.

As  pointed  out  in  previous  studies  that  take  an  interactional  approach to  phenomena  such  as  questions  and  directives  (Freed  and  Ehrlich,  2009; Sorjonen,  Raevaara,  and  Couper-Kuhlen,  2017;  Steensig  and  Drew,  2008b; Steensig, Heineman, and Lindström, 2011), the contextual factors are central to determining the function of any fi  rst pair part and the response it projects (See also Graf et al., 2020; Mayes, 2020; Worsøe and Jensen, 2020). Contextual factors  previously  described,  such  as  who  has  the  deontic  authority  in  the interaction  (Stevanovic  and  Peräkylä,  2012),  issues  of  entitlement  and contingency  (Curl  and  Drew,  2008;  Heineman,  2006)  and  relations  of power in any given situation (Clayman and Heritage, 2014) have so far been addressed in isolation from one another and as such been used to illuminate diff  erences in function. In contrast to these studies, this article demonstrates how questions are multifunctional in the diverse institutional context of the laundry. Here, multiple contexts impact the whiteboard interactions resulting in questions becoming a premise as well as a resource for addressing several agendas and the diversity of the respondents simultaneously.

In the industrial whiteboard meetings studied in this paper, this empirical but  also  methodological  point  presents  an  analytical  challenge,  since  the questions  posed  by  the  team  leader  are  oft  en  not  responded  to  or  only responded to minimally. While returning to this point later in the analysis, it is relevant to mention here how the combination of the institutional setup and the fact that many of the team employees speak only relatively or even very little Danish means that the usual controlling force of the fi  rst pair part question is diff  erently actualized in these whiteboard meetings. Th is  means that  the  analytical  emphasis  will  be  on  formatting,  prosody,  interactional trajectories and contextual factors in general when determining the function of the questions analyzed.

What  this  paper  contributes  with  in  terms  of  previous  studies  of questioning and questions in institutional interactions is an emphasis on the multifunctionality of some questions, that is, the extent to which questions can be used to confl  ate actions relating to both the epistemological and aff  ective dimensions and that this provides a rich  resource  in  terms  of  DM.  Before unpacking and demonstrating this in the analysis, an explanation of what is meant by these dimensions of questions is needed.

Th e  fi  rst  of  these  dimensions,  the  epistemological,  is  perhaps  the  most obvious  when  considering  the  function  of  questions,  in  the  sense  that questions  are  typically  resources  for  acquiring  knowledge  about  someone or something that one does not have already. Or, in some cases, confi  rming knowledge that one already has but is uncertain about or potentially wants to give the impression of not having. Th is dimension of questions has recently been  described  extensively  in  terms  of  epistemic  negotiations  within  CA and the central argument presented in this fi  eld of work is that negotiations about who knows what and who is entitled to know what play a central role in interactional organization and sense-making practices of 'members' within any  given  context  (Heritage,  2012a,  2012b;  Heritage  and  Raymond,  2005; Raymond and Heritage, 2006; Stivers, 2011). For example, as described by Heritage (2012b), the epistemic status of the speaker determines whether an utterance that is morphosyntactically formatted as a question, is indeed heard as a question, or something else, such as a request for confi  rmation. Heritage furthermore argues that epistemic stance, that is, the positioning of a speaker or hearer with respect to what they know or do not know, is consequential to the development of ongoing talk, such as whether the participants initiate closings of a topic or whether a topic is reopened for negotiation (Heritage, 2012a).

Th e second dimension of questions explored in this paper is the aff  ective, which covers the affi liative and disaffi liative (Stivers, 2008) functions of questions that seek to either establish, maintain or challenge social relations with others. As argued by Steensig and Drew (2008a) questions are never innocent and oft  en involve either affi liation or disaffi liation. Affi liation and disaffi liation are terms used within conversation analysis to refer to the relational functions of what interactants 'do with words' . In both cases it involves 'work' on the part of the questioner and that ' [q]uestioners design questions to warrant their occurrence. ' (Steensig and Drew, 2008a, p. 12) Steensig and Drew argue that both lexical items and prosody contribute to marking questions as affi liative and disaffi liative. Th ey also argue, based on the fi  ndings of previous studies of both polar yes-no questions and wh-questions, that it is not the syntactic format of questions that determines whether they are affi liative or disaffi liative, since both types of questions have previously been found to be both affi liative as well as disaffi liative (Steensig and Drew, 2008a, p. 12).

Th e following analysis will demonstrate how the questions and questioning found in the industrial laundry facility whiteboard meeting involve both elements of affi liation and disaffi liation and that this ambiguity works as a resource to manage the diversity of employees and the somewhat contradictory agendas of LEAN management - namely on the one hand eliciting participation and input from the employees and on the other ensuring compliance with institutional procedures and professional practices.

Understanding

Participation

## 5. Analysis

Th e  following  analysis  explores  how  the  multifunctionality  of  questions  is used  as  a  resource  by  team  leaders  to  seek  and  secure  the  understanding, participation, contribution and compliance of the employees in the industrial laundry  facility,  which  can  be  described  as  some  of  the  central  goals  of the  whiteboard  meeting.  Th e  epistemological  and  aff  ective  dimensions  of questions described above can be said to represent drivers (Heritage, 2012a) in the achievement of these interactional goals. Th e goals of the whiteboard meeting in this way involve epistemic and aff  ective work in terms of establishing common ground and in terms of maintaining good and sustainable social relations between team leaders and employees. Questions that seek to secure understanding, compliance or participation will, in this way, involve affi liation or  disaffi liation  as  well  as  negotiations  and  assumptions  about  who  knows what and who is expected to know what.

For sake of overview and clarity of the various forms of multifunctionality explored in this analysis, the following matrix will serve as a graphic illustration:

Figure 1: Th e multifunctionality of questions

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Th e analysis begins by investigating two examples of multifunctionality that could be placed in the top part of the matrix that is, questions that work to secure understanding and compliance. Th e  second part of the analysis will investigate  three  examples  of  questions,  that  can  be  placed  in  the  left    half and the bottom half of the matrix, namely, questions that have the double function of securing understanding and participation and questions that seek participation  and  contribution.  Th e  distinction  between  participation  and contribution would within any other context be diffi cult to make, however, within the context of LEAN based industries and Kaizen meetings, contribution refers not only to types of participation such as producing a response token or responding to a question. Rather, contribution is understood and treated by members as providing input and suggestions about the daily production, which is then noted down and employed as 'items' for future discussions and practices. In that sense, I employ an emically based analysis on the functions of questions that draws, however, on previous conversation analytical fi  ndings about questions as resources for securing understanding, participation and compliance. In the second part of the analysis I will describe how the particular distinction between the function of securing participation and contribution is achieved and manifested.

## 6. Directive questions that seek to ensure compliance and understanding

Th e fi  rst part of the analysis will focus on the type of multifunctional questions that use diff  erent variations of the format ' do you understand' as a resource for not only checking or ensuring understanding but also seeking compliance or giving directives. While scolding someone or giving orders can be a facethreatening  act,  the  following  examples  suggest  that  the  questions  about understanding can be used as  a  resource  for  a  more  covert  means  of  telling  people off   or telling them what to do. Th is strategy of using the multifunctionality of the question ' do you understand' is accommodating the needs and dilemmas of both the questioner and the respondent. On the one hand, it allows the team leaders to seek compliance while avoiding to act 'bossy' . On the other hand, it provides an opportunity for the respondents, the second language speaking employees, to produce a meaningful and acceptable excuse for their lack of compliance, namely 'not understanding' or language diffi culties. Finally, the question ' do you understand' provides all employees with the opportunity to show compliance and contribute to the swift   progression of the interaction into diff  erent matters by providing a positive response or acknowledgement token, regardless of whether they have understood or not.

Th e fi  rst example from the whiteboard meetings in the laundry facility is taken from the beginning of a meeting, where the team leader (TL) has just introduced a point on the agenda, namely mess on the production fl  oor, and the fi  rst part of the extract unfolds a complaint about the messiness of leaving laundry trolleys all over the place.

Example 1: Question about understanding that works to seek compliance

<!-- image -->

46    TL:

øh jeg synes der roder rigtig mange steder øhm

47

eh I think it is messy in a lot of places ehm

48

nogle pakker fl  ere vogne

49

some pack several trolleys

50

så der står nogle vogne der og så står der nogle der

51

so there are some trolleys standing there and then some are

standing there

52

og så er man i gang med en her.

53

and then you are working on one here

54    %com:

TL points to the left   and right with both hands

55    TL:

det dur ikke (.) en vogn af gangen

56

that is no good (.) one trolley at a time

57    %com:

TL points with one fi  nger

58    TL:

pakker man to vogne så er det fordi man har nogle små ordrer

59

if you are packing two trolleys then it is because you has some small orders

60

øhm og man lige tager to vogne sammen bum så er man videre

61

ehm and you (part.) take two trolleys together boom and then you move on

62    %com:

TL makes gestures with her hands to symbolize the wagons

63    TL:

man lader ikke en hel masse stå (0.4)

64

you do not leave a pile standing

65

man lader det heller ikke stå ovre ved bagvæggen

66

you do not leave it standing over by the back wall either

67    %com:

TL points with marker at the employees

68    TL:

øhm fordi man lige venter på noget

69

ehm because you are (part.) just waiting for something

|   70 |       | så tager man det med ned på sin pind you take it to your place   |
|------|-------|------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   71 |       | then                                                             |
|   72 | PPP:  | (3.0)                                                            |
|   73 | %com: | Tl looks back and forth between the whiteboard and the employees |
|   74 |       | and points the marker at the employees                           |
|   75 | TL:   | kan vi ↑ alle sammen forstå det                                  |
|   76 |       | can we all understand that                                       |
|   77 | %com: | TL smiles and looks around at employees                          |
|   78 | PPP:  | (1.6)                                                            |

Th e gist of the complaint that contextualizes the question about understanding in line 75, is produced in line 46 in the form of a declarative utterance. While the complaint is mitigated by adding ' I think' and hesitation markers in the beginning and end, the team leader's privilege in terms of institutional role and status, access to organizational procedures and knowledge leaves no doubt of TL's  legitimacy and entitlement in making a claim to knowledge about the messiness and thereby the wrongdoings of the employees. Th e status of the team leader as 'the boss' is supported and emphasized by the semiotic ecology of the physical layout of the meeting space, where the team leader is the one standing in front of the whiteboard facing the employees who are sitting.

Th is  status  is  confi  rmed  in  the  following  turn  where  TL  elaborates  and supports  her  claim  to  knowledge  with  a  description  of  the  cause  of  the messiness, namely that 'some' (pl.) employees pack more trolleys than one at a time and leave them here and there. Note that TL continues her turn aft  er the fi  rst completion point in line 46 rather than allowing for a response from the employees to the complaint. Th is lengthy elaboration and substantiation of her claim continues until line 73, where she leaves a 3 second pause, during which TL is smiling and pointing her pen at the employees. As they refrain from responding to her complaint, TL then presents the employees with a specifi  c question, ' kan vi allesammen forstå det' (' can we all understand that' ) in line 75.

Based on the previously mentioned controlling and coercive powers of questions  as  fi  rst  pair  parts  that  project  a  particular  response,  one  can  say that  this  polar  question,  given  the  institutional  setting  and  the  sequential environment of the complaint has a strong preference for a positive response, which would simultaneously work as an acceptance of TL's complaint.

In  relation  to  the  notion  that  no  questions  are  innocent  there  is  an interesting tension between an affi liative and a disaffi liative potential in the question, which is central to determining its function. On the one hand, the question appears disaffi liative due to its embedding in the sequential context of the complaint, which is reinforced by the fact that the questioner in this case should know or suspect the answer to the question, which, according to Steensig and Drew, contributes to the disaffi liative potential of questions (Steensig and Drew, 2008a, p. 12). On the other hand, the disaffi liative potential of the question is mitigated by the affi liative use of smile voice, smiling and high pitch at the end of the utterance, that in a sense exaggerates the projection of  the  positive  response  in  such  a  way  that  it  suggests  that  the  question  is rhetorical and an actual response superfl  uous. Th is impression is potentially supported by the marked shift    in  personal  pronoun  from  the  complaining turns, where TL uses ' man' (' you' ) and nogle (' some' ) to the question where TL uses the self-inclusive pronoun ' vi' (' we' ),  which can be heard as more affi liative  by  including  herself  in  the  group  of  'employees'  who  should not only understand but also be less messy.

It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  example  with  the  study  by  Monzoni (2008), which shows how polar questions can sometimes be used to clear the path for direct complaints in the third turn. In this example, we somehow see the opposite, namely that a very direct complaint seems to clear the path for a polar question that in a sense works to underline the complaint. Given the coercive force of questions, TL in this way seems to upgrade her pursuit of a response from the employees to the previous complaint.

Much more in line with the fi  ndings of the study by Vöge and Egbert, who point to the disaffi liative  function of questions formatted with warum ('why') in business meetings, a central part of the function of the question in this example seems to be casting blame and placing responsibility on the employees regardless of the we -formatting of the question.

In  the  following  extract,  we  fi  nd  another  example  of  a  question  about understanding that functions as a directive seeking compliance based on a previous complaint about the actions of the employees. Th e employees and the team leader is talking about a part of the laundry process, ' klippe' ('cutting'), which  takes  place  in  the  sorting  department  and  the  proper  allocation  of workers to that task in relation to the amount of clothes coming in. What is ultimately being addressed, is the need to avoid having employees standing around in sorting without work to do.

Example 2: Question about understanding that functions as a directive

|   129 | TL:   | vi skal klippe hele tiden       |
|-------|-------|---------------------------------|
|   130 |       | We have to cut all the time     |
|   131 |       | vi skal det                     |
|   132 |       | we have to                      |
|   133 |       | og når vi ikke kan det          |
|   134 |       | and when we cannot do that      |
|   135 |       | så må vi afgive nogle folk      |
|   136 |       | then we must give away some     |
|   137 | %com: | TL makes gestures with her arms |

|   138 | PPP:   | (.)                                                                                                                   |
|-------|--------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   139 | TL:    | det bliver vi nødt til                                                                                                |
|   140 |        | we need to                                                                                                            |
|   141 |        | ellers så kommer vi ikke derop                                                                                        |
|   142 |        | otherwise we will not get up there                                                                                    |
|   143 | %com:  | TL points at the Key Performance Index chart on the whiteboard, with a line marking the desired level of performance. |
|   144 | EM5:   | ja                                                                                                                    |
|   145 |        | yes                                                                                                                   |
|   146 | TL:    | og har alle forstået (.) det her                                                                                      |
|   147 |        | and has everyone understood this                                                                                      |
|   148 | %com:  | Tl moves both her hands up and down                                                                                   |
|   149 | TL:    | okay                                                                                                                  |
|   150 |        | okay                                                                                                                  |
|   151 | EM3:   | yes                                                                                                                   |
|   152 |        | yes                                                                                                                   |
|   153 | TL:    | fordi vi har ligget rigtig godt da jeg gik på ferie                                                                   |
|   154 |        | Because we have been placed really well when I went on holiday                                                        |
|   155 |        | så vi kan godt komme op igen                                                                                          |
|   156 |        | so we can get up again                                                                                                |
|   157 |        | vi skal bare tænke på de her ting                                                                                     |
|   158 |        | we just need to think about these things                                                                              |

In the beginning of the extract, line 129, TL is providing the summarizing part of a complaint, which is formatted as a directive telling the employees what they are to do, ' vi skal klippe hele tiden' ('we have to cut all the time'). Following the fi  rst directive is an upgrading repeat ' vi skal det' ('we have to') which accentuates the non-negotiable nature of the previous directive, though slightly mitigated in the immediately following turn by a description of what the  consequences  are  of  not  'cutting  all  the  time' .  What  TL  is  indirectly complaining  about  here  is  the  ineffi ciency  of  employees  in  the  sorting department simply standing around, not cutting and waiting for clothes to come through the funnel to the converter belt, when they could then be used elsewhere in production.

Following a micropause in the turn completion point, which is not fi  lled by  a  response  from  the  employees,  TL  provides  yet  another  repeat  of  the directive, now emphasizing the directive as a requirement. She immediately supplies the account for this requirement, namely that they will otherwise not meet their production goals ' ellers så kommer vi ikke derop' , ('otherwise we will not get up there'), referring to a specifi  c level on the KPI charts. As TL turns to point to the chart on the whiteboard, one of the employees provides an acknowledgement token responding to the directive produced by TL in the turn preceding the account, which could be said to display the alignment that TL is seeking. However, this response appears to be insuffi cient, as she uses the following interrogative as a resource to for a more explicit pursuit of  a  response  in  line  146,  ' og  har  alle  forstået  det  her' ('and  has  everyone understood  this').  Th e  use  of  the  word  ' alle' ('everyone')  addresses  the previous response from EM5 while pointing to the possibility that the other employees  have  failed  to  respond  or  respond  suffi ciently.  Furthermore  the emphasis on 'everyone' works to emphasize or assert that she is not merely inquiring about understanding but rather 'requiring' understanding from all the employees. Th is is clear from her response to the limited uptake from the employees in the sense that if the question had merely been an inquiry about the understanding of all employees, she would not hardly have settled with the acknowledgement tokens of two employees. In this way, we see the same compliance seeking function of the question found in the previous extract.

As in the previous example, the complaint and the directive seems to pave the way for the interrogatively formatted directive in line 146, which projects and demands a response in a more explicit way than the complaint or the directive.  Th ere  are  a  couple  of  interesting  diff  erences,  however,  between the  formatting  and  sequential  context  of  the  interrogative  in  this  example compared  to  the  previous  one,  which  deserve  some  attention.  Th e  fi  rst  of these, the turn-initial addition of ' og' ('and ' ) works to format the interrogative as a continuation of TL 's previous turn, and also works as a follow-up response to the confi  rmation produced by EM5. Th e addition of this 'and' makes it appear as less of an action in its own right and thereby less intrusive and facethreatening as in the previous example. Th e second diff  erence to note, is that in the fi  rst example TL used the inclusive plural pronoun 'we' , the interrogative in this example is formatted with the word ' alle' ( ' all') that could be inclusive of TL but could also be heard as indexing 'all' rather than only 'one' employee, hereby addressing all of the employees, who have not yet responded. In this way, the preference for a response to the previous complaint is displayed. Th e fi  nal diff  erence from the previous example is that TL in this case, following a gesturing movement of her hands up and down, provides the preferred positive, third  pair  part  response  to  her  question,  namely  the  response  token  'okay' . Th is response works not only as a substitute to the lacking response from the employees, it works also as an acknowledgement of this lacking response as suffi cient, and in this way a topic-closure initiation. Th is topic-closure elicits a repeat from another employee, who hereby contributes to closing the issue by displaying understanding and compliance on behalf of 'all' the others.

What  the  two  extracts  illustrate  is  how,  within  an  diverse  workplace settings, the potential lack of understanding of some employees means that questions can be used as a resource for securing understanding while also seeing compliance in a covert and less face-threatening manner than if they were  giving  direct  orders  or  explicit  scolding.  However,  in  both  cases,  the team leader somewhat fails in this attempt since the uptake consists only in a limited and minimal claim of understanding by a few employees.

## 7.  Questions that simultaneously open up a space for participation and securing understanding

Th e  following extracts diff  er  from the previous two by not using questions about understanding as resources to seek compliance with procedures or rules, and yet they are equally multi-functional in the sense that they simultaneously address the continually present potential lack of understanding and yet do more than merely seek or elicit confi  rmation of intersubjectivity. What the following  extracts  show  is  questions  that  are  simultaneously  used  to  invite or  elicit  participation  and  contributions  from  employees  while  opening up a  space  for  clearing  out  misunderstandings.  While  the  attempt  to  elicit participation and contributions from employees can on the one hand be seen as an attempt by Team Leaders to include and engage migrant employees in production issues, it can also be seen as a refl  ection of ideologies and goals related to LEAN management. A central goal in such management ideology is to encourage the participation and engagement of employees in the creation and implementation of ideas for production improvement (Toledo et al., 2019; Toma and Naruo, 2017; Van Dun and Wilderom, 2016). What will be shown in the following part of the analysis is that within a diverse industrial setting such as the one studied here, questions can be used as a strategy to open up a space for participation that on the one hand involves an orientation towards LEAN management goals of generally securing employee input and on the other enables and orientation towards diversity management goals of securing understanding and inclusion of migrant employees.

Th e fi  rst example of this type of questions is topic-specifi  cally formatted in the sense that it invites the other employees to voice their potential confusion or lack of understanding in relation to the topic that has just been covered by TL, namely a required procedure for handling the trolleys.

Example 3: Topic specifi  c question inviting follow-up questions but eliciting othertopic contribution

<!-- image -->

## 111   TL: er der nogen spørgsmål til det

- 112 Are there any questions about that 113 jeg vil også gerne vise hvordan det foregår 114 i will also like to show how it works 115 hvis der er nogen der er i tvivl. 116 if anyone is in doubt 117   EM2: xxx vaskeklude ??og poser med sække?? 118 xxx tea towels and bags of sacks 119   TL: ja 120 yes 121   EM2: xxx vaskeklude og og det er xxx 122 xxx tea towels and and that is xxx 123   %com: TL moves towards EM2 124   TL: nå 125 oh 126   EM2: xxx 127   TL: okay 128 okay 129   PPP: (1.7) 130   %com: TL nods and moves back to the whiteboard 131   TL: det må jeg [lige have tage med xxx] 132 that i will have to (part.) take with xxx 133   EM3: [xxx største xxx] 134 xxx biggest xxx ] 135   EM5: [xxx] 136   %com: TL writes on the whiteboard 137   EM3: [xxx] 138   EM5: [xxx] 139   TL: ja [??sådan??] 140 yes ??like that?? 141   EM3: ??poser?? 142 ??bags?? 143 [xxx] 144   TL: [ja]. 145 yes 146   EM3: ??man kan jo godt tage fl  ere steder?? 147 ??one can (part.) take several places?? 148   TL: ja ja hvis der mangler [fem i hver ikke] 149 yes yes if there is shortage fi  ve in each right 150   EM3: [xxx] 151   TL: det tager jeg med Ging (.) øhm 152 i will take that up with Ging ehm 153 så må de få maskinen til at xxx være sikker på at ??det kører??

154

then they must make the machine to be sure that it is running

155

det er rigtig godt du siger det

156

it is really good that you say it

Th is example demonstrates a type of question that is not aiming as specifi  cally as the previous ones at clarifying problems of understanding nor at ensuring compliance in the form of a covert directive, but are rather focused on eliciting participation. However, in this example, the issue of understanding or rather potential lack of understanding is nevertheless maintained as relevant in the sense that the invitation made for employees to pose additional questions is specifi  ed in relation to the topic that has just been covered. In this way, the invitation to contribute is projecting a joint clarifi  cation of what has been said and explained.

Th e extract is relatively long, and the following analysis will not engage with the entire extract in detail but rather emphasize the following notable points (emphasized by bold font): 1) Th e formatting of the question, 2) the function of the question in terms of eliciting engagement from the employees and 3) the uptake of TL to the response given by the employees, which demonstrates the multifunctionality of the question and its openendedness in terms of the responses it projects.

Beginning with the fi  rst pair part of the sequence, the question by TL in line 111, it is noteworthy in comparison to the previous examples that this is not formatted as an explicit question about understanding but rather as a more general invitation for the employees to ask clarifying questions about what TL has just presented. Th is diff  erence is relevant because it indicates a distinction between the types of questions that are more specifi  cally seeking to secure understanding and those questions that are more specifi  cally aiming towards securing participation, while simultaneously opening up a space for securing  understanding.  Th e  addition  of  the  specifi  cation  ' til  det' ('about that') at the end of the fi  rst turn completion unit, question shows this double orientation towards not only general participation but also intersubjectivity and  securing  understanding.  Had  this  addition  been  left    out,  the  question would have provided a more open invitation to participation.

While the question could have been responded to aft  er the fi  rst TCU, TL leaves only little space for doing so and immediately follows up her question with an off  er  to  demonstrate  what  she  has  just  presented.  Th is  addition  to her question, which again points to the particular matter presented by the wording 'hvordan det foregår' ('how it works'), indicates that the invitation for  clarifying  questions  entails  an  expectation  that  such  questions  could spring from an actual lack of understanding, presenting the need for gestural support. It points, in other words, to TL 's expectations and knowledge about the limited language abilities and the challenges of understanding amongst the employees that she is addressing. Th e multifunctionality of her question is in this way refl  ected in the simultaneous invitation to ask follow-up questions about the content of what she has presented and to clarify or solve potential misunderstandings or a lack of understanding about what she said altogether. It is worth noting that by formatting the question in this multifunctional and ambiguous way TL avoids demonstrating expectations of lack of understanding while providing the opportunity for employees to seek additional explanation or  repetition  of  what  has  been  presented.  Th is  is  markedly  diff  erent  from the function of the formatting 'does everyone understand' which explicitly implies and accentuates the assumed language diffi culties of the employees.

Looking at the second pair part response to TL 's question, which is provided by EM2 in line 117, it is notable that the response is not formatted as a question, which would be the preferred response projected by the fi  rst pair part. Rather, EM2 seems to be introducing a new topic or issue to do with tea towels and 'bags of the sacks' (most likely the ones used to pack the laundry). EM2's response in this way seems to misalign with the projected action following from TL's invitation for follow-up questions to the particular issue presented, namely  the  trolleys.  Th is  misalignment  could  account  for  the  fi  rst  uptake by TL in line 119, which is not an elaborated or repeated explanation of the procedure with the trolleys but simply a minimal acknowledgement prompting EM2 to elaborate on the issue raised in line 21. Most of this elaboration is inaudible due to a lot of noise coming from the room as people step into the cafeteria, but what is noticeable is that TL responds to this elaboration with the change-of-state token ' nå' (' oh'), which once again indicates that EM2's contribution is unexpected. Th is unexpectedness could relate to the issue of tea towels being surprising or new to TL but sequentially the unexpectedness relates to EM2 presenting a new and diff  erent issue altogether in relation to the presently relevant topic of the trolleys.

It is important to notice, however, that the misaligned response by EM2 is not sanctioned or repaired by TL, but rather encouraged and supported. First she displays engagement with the content of the issue raised by moving closer to EM2 (line 123) and then she provides physical and verbal acknowledgement tokens  ('okay'  in  line  127,  'nodding'  in  line  130).  Finally,  she  signals  the importance of the issue by stating ' det må jeg lige have med' ('that I must have with') in line 131 and writes it on the whiteboard behind her in line 136. Th is encouragement and support by TL prompt a rather lengthy co-construction between the employees about the issue and how it can be addressed, which I will not go into here, but which is important as an illustration of the typical uptake and exchange following from this multi-functional open-ended type of question posed by TL. Th e following co-construction and support by TL of the participation and contribution of the employee (lines 139, 144 and 148) can in this way be seen as type of dialogue, engagement and mutuality that TL is seeking and inviting by this type of question as it works to not only open up a space for clarifi  cation and ensuring understanding but for the participation and contribution from the employees. Th e  topic  is  brought  to  an  end  with a  topic  closure  initiation  by  TL  stating  that  she  will  take  this  issue  further by bringing it to another member of staff   (line 151-154) who will then make sure that the issue is resolved. TL then fi  nally closes the topic by providing a positive evaluation of the EM2's response to her question, which works to simultaneously display the importance of the issue raised and praise EM2 for contributing  and  thereby  responding  to  her  initial  invitation.  Th e  positive evaluation by TL can in this way be seen as a response to EM2's contribution and  participation  as  an  appropriate  and  desired  response  to  the  invitation provided by the question.

Th e following example is similar in the sense that the question provided as the fi  rst pair part does not explicitly enquire about understanding but rather presents an invitation for employees to voice their questions and participate by providing some sort of contribution. Th e central diff  erence in this example is that the invitation is 'not' topic specifi  c in the sense of referring back to a previously discussed issue but is rather completely open-ended in terms of the responses it projects. However, within the particular given context of a diverse workplace, where the membership category of 'second language speaker' is omni-relevant and constantly hanging in the air (Day, 1998), it can be argued that  an  invitation  to  ask  questions  provides  a  space  for  employees  to  seek understanding or clarifi  cation on matters that have not been understood or understood fully. While this will also be the case in meetings where language diffi culties are not an issue, securing such a space can be said to be particularly important for managers having to navigate in and orient to employees with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

To summarize, what is argued here in relation to example 3 is that the topic-oriented  specifi  cation  of  question  enables  a  simultaneous  realization of  the  diff  erent  interactional  goals  of  securing  participation  and  securing understanding.  In  the  following  example.  In  the  following  example,  this multifunctionality of questions is realized without topic-orientation, which means that the space for participation, contribution and potential clarifi  cation of  understanding is opened up in a more general way, without pointing to a  potential  problem  of  understanding  with  the  previous  talk.  And  yet,  the contributions projected by the question are guided by the team leader in the direction of a recurrent theme that is covered in the meetings and has been explained to the employees several times, the notion of ' spild' ('waste') and the need for 'waste reduction' , a central aspect of LEAN management. Once again, the confl  ating agendas of securing understanding of central issues and concepts  used  within  the  meetings  and  securing  participation  in  terms  of LEAN management goals are clear.

Example  4:  Open  question  that  invites  participation  and  provides  an opportunity for clarifi  cation

| 171 172   | TL:   | er der nogen der har (0.8) noget at spørge omeller is there anyone who has anything to ask about or   |
|-----------|-------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 173       | PPP:  | (1.6).                                                                                                |
| 174       | TL:   | allerede noget spild (.) nogen der har tænkt lidt over det                                            |
| 175       |       | already some waste anyone who has thought a bit about that                                            |
| 176       |       | (0.8) ja (0.6)                                                                                        |
| 177       |       | yes                                                                                                   |
| 178       | EM1:  | der er tit xxx vogn xxx                                                                               |
| 179       |       | there is often xxx cart                                                                               |
| 180       | TL:   | i stedet for på en                                                                                    |
| 181       |       | in stead of on one                                                                                    |
| 182       | EM1:  | ja xxx så tager de bare                                                                               |
| 183       |       | yes xx then they just take                                                                            |
| 184 185   | %com: | EM1 makes gestures with her hands. TL nods and writes with the marker on the whiteboard               |
| 186       | EM3:  | xxx                                                                                                   |
| 187       | EM1:  | ja ja xxx                                                                                             |
| 188       |       | yes yes xxx                                                                                           |
| 189       | EM3:  | xxx                                                                                                   |
| 190       | EM1:  | det gør vi alle sammen                                                                                |
| 191       |       | we all do that                                                                                        |
| 192       | EM3:  | xxx der er nogen der bliver sure fordi xxx                                                            |
| 193       |       | xxx there are some who get mad because xxx                                                            |
| 194       | EM1:  | xxx                                                                                                   |
| 195       | PPP:  | (1.6)                                                                                                 |
| 196       | EM3:  | det er lige ved at blive xxx mange vogne xxx                                                          |
| 197       |       | it is just about to become xxx a lot of carts xxx                                                     |
| 198       | PPP:  | (5.0).                                                                                                |
| 199       | TL:   | yes (1.6) nå ja men det var en god en (.)hmm Yes oh yeah well that was a good one                     |

Th e  formatting  of  the  question  in  line  171  is  quite  similar  to  the  previous example except for the lack of specifi  cation in terms of the previous topic and the slightly more personifi  ed use of ' anyone' rather than the previous neutral use of 'are  there  any  questions' .  Th is  personifi  cation  works  to  increase  the pressure on the employees to respond and the addition of the ' eller' ('or') has a double function of on the one hand suggesting the alternative, namely that no one has any questions, and on the other broadening the scope of possible contributions to not only questions. In other words, the employees are asked whether they have questions or something else they would like to contribute with.

Since the question does not immediately elicit a response, TL elaborates and renews her request for a response in line 174 by providing a candidate example of what the employees might off  er as a contribution, namely refl  ections on the reduction of ' spild' (' waste' ), which is a recurrent theme in the meetings and a central aspect of the LEAN ideology.

Aft  er a long pause, TL adds a yes, and allows another long pause, which works to add additional pressure on the employees to respond, in that it displays her determination to give the fl  oor to the employees and have them produce a contribution. Finally, EM1 contributes with an issue about the trolleys, which is diffi cult to hear but which is responded to by TL as a description of a practice or behavior that has an alternative, which she provides, namely 'I stedet for på en' ('instead of on one ') .  In  this way, TL links the utterance by EM1 to her request for suggestions for waste reduction, and in line 178 she underlines the relevance of this contribution by writing on the whiteboard. From line 180 to 187 EM1, EM3 and TL cooperate in formulating the issue and the topic is  closed by TL in line 189, where she provides a positive evaluation of the contribution by the employees that displays its alignment with the response projected from her initial request. Th e example in this way shows, that the open-ended request for ' questions or …' and the following candidate example specifi  cation of what those contributions might be, works to elicit input from the employees, which aligns with the expectations of the team leader. Th is indicates that the mentioning of questions in the initial interrogative utterance of TL, while projecting and allowing for clarifying questions and clarifi  cation of misunderstandings, can be used as a resource for eliciting participation and contributions of a diff  erent nature.

Th e  following  and  fi  nal  example  is  even  more  open-ended  than  the previous one as it includes no mentioning of 'asking questions' , and thereby does not in any way allude to a potential problem of understanding. As such, it appears less multifunctional than the questions previously examined because it seems to invite the contributions and input of employees while not, at the same time, seeking clarifi  cation of potential misunderstandings. Given that the focus of this paper is how the multifunctionality of questions can serve as a resource for managing diverse agendas and diversity among the audience, this example will merely serve a comparative purpose to the previous examples where multifunctionality is central. What is interesting as a comparative point is  that  the  space for participation, which is opened up by the team leader's question, is used by employees for exactly the type of participation that it is not explicitly inviting, namely asking clarifying questions. Worth noting, in that respect, is that the employee responding is a native-speaker of Danish and that the question posed is of a general nature, rather than topic-oriented or related to a lack of understanding of the previous talk.

Example 5: Alternative question formatting that invites and elicits participation and contribution

<!-- image -->

## 529   TL:

er der noget i:: har lyst til at sige til os

530

is there anything you feel like saying to us

531   PPP:

(1.7)

532   %com:

EM9 raises her hand

533   EM9:

jeg vil bare stille et hurtigt spørgsmål

534

I would (part.) like to pose a quick question

535   TL:

hm (0.3)

536   EM9:

de der viskestykker der (0.2)

537 Th ose teatowels there

538

der er rigtig mange som øh skal vaskes igen (0.3)

539

there are real many that eh need rewashing

540

xxx meget beskidte (0.2)

541 very dirty

542   TL:

hm

543   EM9:

kan man xxx

544

can one

545   PPP:

(0.6)

546   EM9:

nu spørger jeg bare

547

now i am just asking

548

hvorfor giver man ikke dem sådan en kemisk rens eller

549

why does one not give them one of those chemical cleanings or

| 550             | PPP:     | (0.6)                                                                                                             |
|-----------------|----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 551 552         | EM9:     | sådan en omvask fra start such a rewash from the beginning                                                        |
| 553 554 555     | PPP: TL: | (1.1) det gør man ikke fordi en omvask den for det første that one does not do because a rewash it first of all   |
| 557 558 559     | EM9:     | it is very very very hard ja (0.2) yes                                                                            |
| 560 561 562 563 | TL:      | øh::m så hvis vi gjorde det hver gang eehm so if we did that every time så ville vi slide det tøj alt for hurtigt |
| 564             | EM9:     | then we would wear out those clothes much too fast mhm                                                            |
| 565 566         | TL:      | ja yes                                                                                                            |
| . . .           | }        | Omitted part of extract                                                                                           |
|                 | TL:      |                                                                                                                   |
| 568             |          | så så øhm:: men fint du spørger so so ehm but good that you ask                                                   |
| 569             |          |                                                                                                                   |

Th ere are two central things to notice about the formatting of the question by TL in line 529, that diff  ers from the previous examples, namely the fact that the question does not enquire about understanding and that it does not explicitly invite  the  employees  to  ask  questions.  Instead,  the  question  much  more openly encourages participation and input by inviting employees (' you ') to 'say ' something to TL and her associate standing by her ('us') with a distinctive addition of the word ' lyst' ('feel like') which is affi liative in displaying empathy or regard for the needs and wishes of the employees. Th is is markedly diff  erent from the directive request for confi  rmation  of  understanding  found  in  the fi  rst  example  and  also  from  the  request  for  clarifi  cation  of  the  employees' understanding about previous utterances and issues presented by TL found in the second and third examples. Th e primary function of this question, besides from displaying affi liation,  seems  in  this  way  to  be  opening  up  a  space  for participation and contribution from the employees on 'their' terms.

Th e second pair part response to this invitation is provided by EM9 who raises her hand (line 132) and produces a rather lengthy preliminary (Schegloff  , 1980)  in  line  133-147,  followed  by  a  question  in  line  148,  which  concerns the  rewash  of  tea-towels  that  are  extraordinarily  dirty.  While  the  question of EM9 can be said to align with the open proposition for participation and contributions the mitigation strategy of producing the lengthy preliminary to the question can be said to orient to the fact that TL 's formatting of question does  NOT  invite  questions,  as  it  did  in  the  previous  examples,  but  rather invites 'speaking your mind' and what EM9 is off  ering is a question about the  procedures  of  ' omvask' ('rewash').  While  EM9's  response  is  possible as  a  meaningful  response  it  is  not  the  most  obvious  or  preferred  type  of uptake from the employees within this particular context. What might also explain the mitigation and displays of misalignment with TL's question is the asymmetric distribution of knowledge and status between the participants, which potentially makes the somewhat polemic challenge to the way things are done, a face-threatening and disaffi liative act. Th is can be said to be refl  ected in line 546 'nu spørger jeg bare' ('now I am just asking'), which suggests that what is to come might be heard as controversial or bold in some way. Such mitigation and face-work suggests that the 'open fl  oor' , that TL has attempted to establish with her question might not be considered equally open to the other employees.

Th e response to the employee's question is provided by TL without delay or mitigation in line 554-563 and this response is acknowledged and accepted by EM9 in line 558 and 565, allowing TL to initiate topic closure in line 566. Th e exchange continues further with another explanatory account produced by TL about the reasons for this particular procedure with 'omvask' ('rewash'), which I will not engage with here, and the topic is fi  nally closed in line 576 by TL providing an evaluation of EM9's contribution which is similar to the one found in the previous example. Worth noting is the emphasis on the fact that EM9's contribution was in fact a question, whereas in the previous example, TL invited a question but received a 'contribution' . Th is  evaluative response by TL to EM9's question can be said to work to acknowledge and accept the misalignment that EM9's non type-conforming contribution represents.

## 8. Conclusion

In  this  paper,  it  has  been  argued  that  the  multifunctionality  of  questions is  not  merely a premise in the sense of the contextual contingency of their performative force but that their multifunctionality provides a resource for pursuing various interactional goals at the same time, some of which relate to addressing a diverse workplace context. Within the setting of the industrial Kaizen whiteboard meeting where 80% of the employees speak little Danish, the  multifunctionality  of  questions  is  used  as  a  tool  by  team  leaders  to simultaneously  address  the  potential  problems  of  understanding  among employees  and  the  problem  of  securing  the  compliance  and  participation of employees with respect to production procedures and improvement. It is argued that the use of questions, in this way, manifests a double orientation towards the ideologies of diversity management and LEAN management.

With respect to the goal of managing a diverse team, the challenge for team leaders is how to address problems with the effi ciency of production and the work of team members as a result of, in some cases, a lack of understanding, and in other cases, unwillingness, disagreement or failure to see the purpose of particular procedures, goals and rules. In addition to a high level of diversity in  terms  of  language  profi  ciency,  these  employees  are  diverse  in  terms  of nationality, previous work experiences, educational background and number of  years  spent  in  the  fi  rm,  which  means  that  the  team  leaders  are  facing  a great  deal  of  variation  amongst  employees  in  terms  of  the  knowledge  and understanding of workplace procedures and goals. While negotiations about the epistemological status of participants play a central role in any interaction (Heritage, 2012a), the management of a production consisting of such a diverse group of employees requires that team leaders orient to signifi  cant diff  erences in the territories of knowledge among employees when they request, direct and  prescribe  particular  actions  of  their  team.  Th e  multifunctionality  of questions provides an opportunity to address this heterogeneity in territories of  knowledge  without  singling  out  particular  employees  and  putting  them on the spot. What the analysis has shown, however, in relation to questions that  seek  to  ensure  intersubjectivity  as  well  as  compliance,  is  that  they  do get  very  minimal  uptake,  if  any  at,  all  from  migrant  employees  and  native speaking  employees  alike.  While  the  focus  of  this  paper  has  not  been  the systematic  analysis  of  diff  erent  strategies  for  securing  understanding  and the relative success or failure of these (Tranekjær, 2018), the fi  ndings invite refl  ection on the relative success of using the multifunctionality of questions to these particular, and quite diff  erent, interactional goals. It may seem, that by formatting the question about understanding in a way that can be heard as seeking compliance or 'doing scolding' might make some employees refrain from revealing their lack of understanding, which in itself is an interactionally diffi cult thing to do.

In contrast, the multi-functionality of questions might be more productive and  useful  as  a  resource  for  managing  the  ambiguous  role-distribution between team leaders and employees that on the one hand work side by side on the production fl  oor as colleagues and on the other are positioned in a hierarchical employee-manager relationship (Rasmussen, 2017). As suggested by the examples, the multi-functionality of questions provides a resource for 'doing being a manager' that seeks compliance with procedures while at the same time maintaining good relations and affi liation with the team members. When posing questions about understanding that also work to prescribe a particular  behavior  in  a  less  face-threatening  way  than  explicit  demands, orders or scolding, the team leader is in less danger of ostracizing herself from the group. Th e multifunctional property of the question in this way works to veil the pursuit of compliance as a pursuit for understanding, hereby clouding the distinction between the role of manager and fellow employee.

With respect to the goal of implementing LEAN as a production ideology and  a  type  of  management  supported  and  manifested  by  the  whiteboard meeting format, the paper has shown how the multifunctionality of questions is used by team leaders to open up a space for employees to participate in, and contribute to, production improvement and effi ciency while at the same time providing the opportunity for securing intersubjectivity. While a central goal of the Kaizen meeting is to elicit contributions and insight from employees about how to potentially improve production, the fi  rst two examples leave no doubt of the asymmetric distribution of rights to determine what qualifi  es as the better way of doing things. As such, the question about understanding in these two cases involves a strong preference for agreement and, in eff  ect, leave very little room for a negative response. In this way this type of question bear close resemblance to the Egbert and Vöges (Egbert and Vöge, 2008) fi  ndings on  the  disaffi liative  and  hierarchical  ' warum' ('why')    found  in  business meetings.

While in the fi  rst two examples understanding seems to be employed as a  Trojan  horse  for  seeking  compliance  and  giving  directives,  the  following three examples provide a space for asking clarifying questions about what has been said and presented. In this way, these types of questions, although they paradoxically do not explicitly topicalize 'understanding' , they in some ways provide a safer space for bringing up problems of understanding or seeking repetition of things that have not been understood fully. Th is is due to the fact, that they do not sequentially follow from a complaint and in this way have no directive element to them. However, despite the fact that these questions that  request  or  invite  questions  from  employees  provide  an  opportunity for  clarifi  cation,  they  are  not  heard  as  such  by  employees.  Rather,  they  are used as spaces for other types of participation, such as asking about other issues than the ones topicalized, and not least for contribution in the form of input and issues that can potentially improve production and cooperation between the employees. Th is suggests that the type of questions that request or invite questions are in fact used to elicit participation more generally, rather than merely seeking to secure intersubjectivity, which shows an orientation towards the LEAN  management  goal  of bottom-up improvement of production from employees. Some of these participation-eliciting questions are more specifi  cally aiming towards a particular type of participation than others, which was illustrated by the two fi  nal examples. Here, it was argued, that the manifestation of LEAN ideology was particularly salient in the way that the explicit and yet very open requests for contributions were used as a resource to include, engage and benefi  t from the knowledge of the employees, illuminating a wish for bottom-up knowledge elicitation and innovation. In relation to the issue of diversity management and the contributions of this paper to previous studies one can say that the fi  ndings point to a paradox. On the  one  hand the institutional organization of a weekly Kaizen whiteboard meetings potentially opens up a space for dialogue and interaction, that could potentially work to include and engage those migrant employees who would otherwise  potentially  be  marginalized  because  of  language  diffi culties  or because a particular  workplace  would  otherwise  not  provide  opportunities for interaction or speaking the majority language (Bramm and Kirilova, 2018; Tranekjær and Kirkebæk, 2017). On the other hand, the paper suggests that the foregrounding of diff  erence in terms of language and knowledge territories achieved through questions about understanding that can simultaneously be heard  to  seek  compliance  are  counterproductive  to  overcoming  diff  erence and establishing intersubjectivity and participation. As such, the questioning practices used in the whiteboard meeting could be seen as counterproductive to its dialogic potential as a joint space of interaction and exchange.

Another, perhaps seemingly banal, but central contribution of this paper in  terms  of  diversity  management,  is  the  way  that  the  presented  analysis illuminates some of the specifi  c activities and strategies involved in the daily orientation towards and management of a diverse production team. In diverse production settings, issues of potential misunderstanding are omnirelevant and  the  need  to  secure  intersubjectivity,  understanding  and  compliance in  terms  of  daily  production  procedures  is  no  less  acute  but  much  more challenging.  One  of  the  interesting  fi  ndings  presented  in  this  paper  is  that the fundamental contextuality in the meaning and function of questions can be employed as a specifi  c resource in meetings of the Kaizen type. In these meetings, many agendas and goals have to be addressed in a very short time and  the  multifunctional  properties  of  questions  allow  leaders  to  address diff  erent interactional goals simultaneously to diff  erent groups of employees, who,  depending  on  their  language  ability,  their  professional  knowledge and status might understand, interpret and respond diff  erently to the same question. What could be heard and meaningfully responded to as a request for clarifying questions for some might be heard as a request for contribution by others, and as shown by the third turn response by the team leader in example 4,  this  ambiguity  in  the  question  and  the  potential  response  is  seemingly unproblematic and most likely expected.

What  the  paper  has  argued  is  that  the  fundamental  ambiguity  in  the function  of  questions  and  the  versatile  performative  force  that  they  entail can be used as a management resource to address diff  erent and sometimes confl  ictual interactional goals. More specifi  cally it was shown that within the context of the diverse industrial production sites, the multi-functionality of questions were used as a tool to simultaneously follow the logics of diversity management and the logics of LEAN and a resource to addressing the goals of ensuring understanding and participation while also seeking compliance with eff  ective production procedures.

## Note

1

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