This paper focuses on the analysis of a written questionnaire administered to a group of foremen working in a tyre factory in Brazil. The questionnaire is designed to reveal the" style of leadership" carried out by each member of the group, among five possible variants: autocratical, demagogical, resigning, mediative and participative. The participative profile is seen by the author of the questionnaire as "the adequate one", in as much as it harmonises workmen’s personal and organisational interests. On the basis of a polyphonic conception of negative utterances the case is made for a more complex view of the questionnaire: beyond the five profiles critically antecipated, a sixth one is contemplated, which seems to coincide clearly with what we call "the voice of the organisation", putting forward different kinds of knowledge in the context of interactions at work.
Polyphony; Discourse; Questionnaire; Negation; Interactio
