Corporate Stories as Cultural Communications in the Organizational Setting

Abstract

Corporate stories represent a rich resource for the study of organizational communication, a resource that, since 1979, has received some serious attention. It is useful to be able to discuss corporate stories as organizational development interventions, as aids to culture change, and as behavioral monitors and controls. To do this, we must first understand model story forms, the process of composition, the nature of variants and invariants, story transformations, and the balance of tradition and change in story development. Toward this objective, this article recommends the anthropological-ethnographic perspective, in particular, that of oral traditional literature, as an appropriate context for the study of organizational stories. Such a perspective better enables us to understand the creation, transformation, maintenance, and transmission of these symbolic artifacts of organizational culture.