Organisational Storytelling

Abstract

In this article we consider some of the ways in which narrative approaches might contribute towards a better understanding of organisational knowledge management. The telling of stories has a long, rich, and varied tradition, stretching back hundreds of years. In the study of organisations, storytelling can be seen as part of a wider field of enquiry, Organisational Discourse, which seeks to ascribe meaning to social exchanges within organisations (Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004; Grant & Hardy, 2003). Narratives have been explicitly identified (Wensley, 1998; Denning, 2000; Ward & Sbarcea, 2001) as one of the ways in which knowledge might be exchanged in organisational settings, but only limited consideration has been given to the ways in which storytelling approaches can increase our understanding of the creation and dissemination of knowledge in organisations. In this article we reflect on what we might learn from the application of narrative processes, particularly organisational storytelling, and from narrative content, particularly organisational narrative knowledge, to assess the place of such storytelling in KM.