‘Whose Story is it?’: Co-production and Psychological Ownership of Narrative Reports

Abstract

The paper examines the co-production of narrative reports in the context of a non-profit innovation network. Prior research on narrative reporting suggests that corporate reports and similar organizational narratives are likely the product of collective efforts of different actors in the backstage. The actual process of (re-)writing such narratives has received little attention, however. In our paper, we examine how the inputs of different individual actors are translated into an organizational narrative. Mobilizing Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology as our main lens of analysis, we highlight different mechanisms of dramaturgical guidance in backstage interactions, and we show how such guidance can have repercussions on the original authors of narratives when they feel like they are losing ownership of ‘their’ stories. Overall, our paper adds to our understanding of the backstage-frontstage dynamics in narrative reporting.