Corporate Storytelling Research Articles

Writing Back Against Amazon’s Empire: Science Fiction, Corporate Storytelling, and the Dignity of the Workers’ Word

Since its founding in 1994 as an online bookstore, Amazon has “revolutionised” not only the market for literature but also expanded aggressively and transformatively in sectors including consumer retail, film and television, groceries, logistics, robotics, surveillance, AI, and web services. This growth and expansion is grounded in the firm’s internal and outward-facing rhetoric about its leading contribution to a brighter future, a narrative deeply inspired by the genre of science or speculative fiction (SF). But Amazon’s utopian vision is largely experienced as a dystopia by most of its rank-and-file workers, who labour under exploitative conditions of surveillance, robotization, and relentless managerial control. Hence our team inaugurated the Worker as Futurist project to support rank-and-file Amazon workers to read/watch SF stories to collectively understand their employer and its world, and also to write short, SF stories about “the world after Amazon.” In this preliminary report on the project, we explain the inspirations for the project and reflect on some of what we have learned from the participants, as well as some implications for the futures of platform workers generally.

Exploration, Storytelling and Frontier-Making in the Colombian Andes

This chapter shows how the speculative (pre-)lives and afterlives of resource extraction are put together through corporate narrative and imaginative practices. It shows that the expansion of extractive frontiers is not merely driven by abstract and asocial market forces, but that deeply social practices of storytelling and imagination are also vital for making mining exploration possible. Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork in Colombia, it discusses the spectacular narratives surrounding the exploration campaign of South African gold mining corporation AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) across the Colombian Andes. The chapter examines how corporate storytelling unfolds through corporate processes and individual narratives, and shows it to be integral to conjuring Colombia as the ‘last Andean frontier’ for gold exploration in the international investor’s imagination. Corporate narrative and performative practices were not only crucial to attracting and sustaining investor interest, but also served an important internal function in shaping the professional identity of exploration geologists and corporate identity more broadly. At the same time, the chapter shows that frontier expansion and the capitalisation of mineral finds are uneven and speculative processes, with room for alternative stories.

Internal Communication Practices Impact on the Institutional Brand During Institutional Transition

Progressive higher education institutions, in a competitive environment, evaluate brand positioning to navigate through communication, economic and globalization challenges. Literature in Sub-Saharan Africa hardly interrogates how public universities manage institutional brand for competitive advantage (Sulkowski, Wozniak, & Seliga, 2019) from an internal communication perspective. In Kenya, rapid university expansion and funding reduction enhanced competition. In a complex and dynamic context, vibrant institutions align corporate strategy to internal communication and position institutional brand. Thus, this study interrogates how the internal communication practices of an emerging university in Kenya impact institutional brand during transformation. A total of 153 Questionnaires were administered and 18 in-depth interviews were undertaken. Data as collected from 18 middle-level management who were purposively selected and the 153 self-administered questionnaires using stratified random sampling were administered on MMU faculty and administrative staff. The findings suggest that effective communication be through employee participation in decision-making (90%), conflict management (73%), brand management (mean 3.3), and corporate storytelling for institutional memory. However, management communication practices did not effectively communicate corporate objectives, marketing and branding strategy during university transition which negatively influenced image building and employee trust. The study recognized the importance of an internal communication policy, during transition, to provide a systematic and structured process which incorporates employee participation and empowerment. Employee participation strategy that integrates induction, interpersonal activities and interactive channels such as social media to communicate institutional strategic elements and enhance relationship management. Empowerment contributes to institutional brand management through mid-manager training, information inclusion, diversity management through internal stakeholder sessions, the use of mediated communication embracing social media, intranet and website to sensitize institutional management and employees. Upcoming public universities, like organisations, are expected to survive and thrive, through strong corporate branding to counter progressive forces arising from global, curricular, policy, technological and generational transformations. The study recommends an internal communication policy and management practice for effective communication of institutional messages to enhance employee participation and empowerment to improve brand positioning during institutional transformation.

Healthy Snacks: Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Traditional Food Brand Corporate Storytelling

This research analyzes how a snack manufacturer uses corporate storytelling on social media to promote healthy eating. The new public health period has developed a market for healthy or well-being-related items. Many firms have emerged to give healthy food options. Social semiotic theory and multimodal critical discourse analysis ask: How do these organizations use corporate stories to make themselves seem superior to their competitors? How do they market healthy, appealing products? How does this marketing encourage healthier product choices? One healthy snack company's corporate story reveal that health discourse colonizes healthy eating for marketing and branding. These companies also claim abstract, symbolic, and commercial health. These company stories may mislead consumers who want to eat healthy into eating less healthful goods.

Conceptual model of corporate storytelling for branding

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to ascertain the relationship between corporate storytellingfor branding and internal stakeholders’ perceptions of the corporate brand. The paucity of existingknowledge found in reviewing a variety of literature sources relating to corporate brand storytellingspurred the authors into carry out the research. The link between themes and elements of corporatestories for branding and strategies for impression management indicates that these elementsrelate to audiences’ perceptions of the corporate brand. From the literature review, there is a linkbetween elements of corporate stories for branding (such as corporate personalities, corporateactivities, corporate values, and corporate associations) and internal stakeholders’ perceptionsand emotional attachment to a corporate brand. Corporate management needs to actively involveinternal stakeholders in developing corporate stories for branding as this is crucial in creatingpositive corporate brand perceptions. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by allowinglisted corporates to maximise the effectiveness of their corporate stories for branding in shapingthe internal stakeholders’ corporate brand perceptions. The paper suggests a conceptual modelfor depicting the relationship between corporate storytelling for branding and internal stakeholders’corporate brand perceptions.

Exploring narrative strategy: the role of narratives in the strategic positioning of organizational change

This article considers how the use of narratives has steadily transformed corporate strategy in the context of organizational change in recent years. ‘Narrative strategy’ is defined in this article as an evolving field concerned with the role of narratives as patterns of expectation and understanding in organizational transformation. In contrast to a post-strategic and communications-based approach of corporate storytelling, developing a narrative strategy clarifies an organization’s position regarding significant societal debates and derives from a change narrative. The concepts’ narrative constellation’ and ‘narrative discrepancy’ will be introduced to describe how organizations align and position their strategy with broader societal narratives. Both concepts are explored via a literature review and the authors’ experience as consultants. One exemplary case demonstrates how an organization developed and implemented a narrative strategy in a change process: Merck Group’s use of narratives during its transformation from a pharmaceutical manufacturer to a science and technology company in 2014. The article, thus, conceptualizes narrative strategy as a crucial aspect of contemporary strategy development.

Communicative Skills Through Corporate Storytelling Video: Students’ Perception

In this era of advanced technology, students must be equipped with essential skills for success in today’s world; critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and communication. Having a successful communication does not only refer to success in delivering information, but also how it has engaged the audience. Corporate storytelling is a communication strategy in presenting a company’s brand and values to an audience using narrative techniques. Using corporate storytelling video as an English language competency course can offer activities that assist students to use their creativity in presenting ideas and expressing opinions confidently. This paper presents students’ perception on the effectiveness of these activities in enhancing their communicative skills through a survey questionnaire. The data were obtained from 227 students who took the Corporate Storytelling course through a questionnaire survey with the inclusion of open-ended comments distributed at the end of the semester. The findings show that the students perceive the activities to have improved their reading, writing, listening, speaking skills, presentation skills, critical thinking, and creativity. It is also found that the activities have helped the students to interpret the message in the video and to give their reaction to the video. The activities are also perceived to have boosted their motivation to use English to enhance their communicative skills.

A Smart Right to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism

Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

Better Benefits for Better Business: Certified Benefit Corporations Connected Through Internal Communications

Despite the broad body of research examining Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communications, there remains a lack of literature discussing the expansion of Certified Benefit Corporations (B Corps), which are businesses that meet a verified social and environmental performance to advance social good. Existing research analyzes the connection of internal communications and CSR. The following research reviews this relationship and suggests that more for profit companies qualify to be an effective B Corp due to shared qualitative characteristics of internal communications.
 The characteristics reviewed are corporate storytelling, triple bottom line values, and the importance of key decision makers. The literature review connects CSR and internal communications to form the foundation of 21 interview questions. The interview questions were used to identify qualitative characteristics of B Corps through an in-depth interview process. Top key decision makers in B Corps were selected to interview to gather qualitative information on their internal communications. The interview questions led to an open dialogue about the influence B Corps has had on each company. Each interview was transcribed accordingly and discussed in the research below. Three themes were discovered after reviewing the primary research. The overall consensus suggests that a sense of strong internal communications in a company can be represented in a Certified Benefit Corporation.

American Dreams: Smart sleep, high-tech beds, and the National Football League

Sleep Number became an official health and wellness sponsor of the National Football League (NFL) in 2018, making each active player eligible for a free internet-enabled smart bed. This article investigates the social and digital divides that arise as the NFL and Sleep Number imagine sleep as something “smart” and anchored in technological progress in marketing campaigns. This article argues that while the NFL and Sleep Number package smart beds as empowering and emancipatory, corporate storytelling creates new rest-related obligations and re-constitutes collective understandings of sleep and sleep difficulties along racial, gender, and economic lines. Smarter sleep promotes individualized, market-driven solutions which are at odds with emerging scientific findings that highlight the role of racism and other structural issues in sleep and sleep disparities.

The role of company’s top officials in corporate communications

In contemporary society, corporate communications are becoming an increasingly important and significant component of management. This field includes not only building an external and internal image of a company but also interacting with stakeholders and achieving business aims. This research aims to define the potential and features of company’s top officials (owners, CEOs, presidents, and other top managers) involvement in corporate communications and representing a business. It is based on the content analysis of corporate websites of the first 100 international companies from the Forbes list. The study demonstrated that most (62%) world successful firms involve their owners, CEOs, and top managers in corporate communications as speakers. At the same time, business owners appear on corporate websites less often (only 2%). CEOs engage in such communications in 47% of cases. Most often, other authorized representatives are speakers of companies (51%). A descriptive analysis of topics helped to distinguish the most common types of texts: formal ideological speeches, corporate news, corporate blog texts, and personalized corporate storytelling. Most texts are posted on corporate websites in the News chapter (28%). This suggests that news as a genre may be the most appropriate form of communication on behalf of management. Thus, some recommendations are proposed regarding the participation of top officials as speakers. From a practical point of view, companies can be guided by the outcomes of this research when deciding to engage their leaders in corporate communications.

Geoengineering super low carbon cows: food and the corporate carbon economy in a low carbon world

The tangible progress to address climatic change remains painfully slow. As a result, practices to deliberately manipulate the Earth’s carbon and energy cycles to counteract climate change have gained traction and they are increasingly incorporated into mainstream debate. This paper examines one of the less documented examples of climate geoengineering, namely the creation of ‘super low carbon cows’. Driven by the public’s desire for a low carbon pint of milk or beef burger, I show how a combination of bioengineering, technological fixes and management practices have resulted in, and are informing, everyday changes to the way in which animals are bred, cared for and eaten—and in turn, how it affects the food that we consume. Thus, the role of the cow within the Anthropocene now extends from meat machine and sentient being to climate change saviour. I seek to show that super low carbon cows represent part of a wider climate ‘responsibilisation’ in which business interests and corporate storytelling are governing and enacting everyday mundane practices of climate engineering as part of the corporate carbon economy. Yet, as with other climate ‘fixes’, this paper shows that the super low carbon cow provides, at best, an imperfect correction. Critical gaps in the evidence of the efficiency of the solutions being advanced remain whilst manipulating an animal to be more climate friendly evokes unease when considering the wider sustainability and ethical impacts. Perhaps most critically, reliance on climate engineering to provide cheap and easy ways to control our climate fails to question, far less address, the ever-increasing demand, production and wastage of food. It also potentially undermines the already weak political will for other essential and more radical responses to climate change. In doing so, I contrast the extensive efforts to change the everyday behaviours of a cow with the limited attempts to meaningfully challenge the everyday practices, consumption lifestyles and dietary choices of the general public.

Exploring internal stakeholders’ emotional attachment & corporate brand perceptions through corporate storytelling for branding

The goal of this article was to explore internal stakeholders’ emotional attachment and corporate brand perceptions through corporate storytelling for branding. Due to the nature of the research qu...

Corporate storytelling for branding: Underpropping or thwarting internal stakeholders’ optimistic corporate brand perceptions?

There are many instances when pervasive and/or retrogressive corporate stories for branding are experienced and not reported truthfully in the organisations. If corporate stories for branding are n...

Structurally validated scale of measuring the link between corporate storytelling for branding & internal stakeholders’ corporate brand perceptions

The research purpose was to assess the link between corporate storytelling for branding and internal stakeholders’ corporate brand perceptions. Nomothetic quantitative explanatory research design a...

Human Rights in the Age of Platforms

Scholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society.Today such companies as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter play an increasingly important role in how users form and express opinions, encounter information, debate, disagree, mobilize, and maintain their privacy. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society.The contributors consider the ?datafication? of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. Finally, they discuss the relationship between human rights law and private actors, addressing such issues as private companies' human rights responsibilities and content regulation.ContributorsAnja Bechmann, Fernando Bermejo, Agnes Callamard, Mikkel Flyverbom, Rikke Frank Jorgensen, Molly K. Land, Tarlach McGonagle, Jens-Erik Mai, Joris van Hoboken, Glen Whelan, Jillian C. York, Shoshana Zuboff, Ethan ZuckermanOpen access edition published with generous support from Knowledge Unlatched and the Danish Council for Independent Research.

The making of healthy and moral snacks: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of corporate storytelling

This paper examines how snack brands represent themselves as producers of healthy food through corporate stories on their websites. The increased emphasis on health in “the new public health era” has created a market for products promoted as healthy or with some kind of wellbeing association. Riding on this trend, many companies have emerged and positioned themselves as providing good food options. Employing the theory of social semiotics and using multimodal critical discourse analysis, we ask the following questions: How do these companies use corporate stories to make themselves appear as a better alternative than their competitors? How do they make their products appear healthy and attractive to consumers? And how can this kind of marketing help consumers choose healthier products? The analysis of 22 corporate stories of healthy snack companies shows that healthy eating is colonized by a moral discourse for marketing and branding purposes. Furthermore, the health qualities these companies claim to have are abstract, symbolic, and commercialized. We argue that these corporate stories provide no meaningful indication as to the healthiness of these products and can mislead consumers to consume less healthy food while having the intention to eat healthily.

The Narrative Turn, Corporate Storytelling, and Oral History: Canada’s Petroleum Oral History Project and Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action No. 92

As business historians embrace the narrative turn, they would do well to consider the opportunities provided by oral history. For-profit corporate storytellers offer one approach. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s call to action no. 92, however, offers a better one. This article explores the potential impact on business historians of the TRC, using the Petroleum Industry Oral History Project as an example.

Galimybės naudoti korporatyvinį pasakojimą organizacijų komunikacijoje

Šio straipsnio tikslas – atskleisti korporatyvinio pasakojimo panaudojimo galimybes organizacijų komunikacijoje. Straipsnyje analizuojamas korporatyvinio pasakojimo pritaikomumas šiuolaikinių organizacijų veikloje, leidžiantis padidinti tikslinių auditorijų susidomėjimą bei į jų įsitraukimą į komunikaciją. Teorinio tyrimo metodu buvo nustatyti korporatyvinio pasakojimo panaudojimo tikslai, pritaikomumo sritys, naudojami pasakojimo struktūros elementai bei schemos korporatyviniam pasakojimui sukurti. Empirinio tyrimo būdu buvo išnagrinėta, kokius korporatyvinio pasakojimo elementus naudoja didžiausios Lietuvos organizacijos, pristatydamos savo verslo istoriją socialinėse interneto erdvėse.

Alla älskar en underdog

Everyone Loves the Underdog – Corporate Storytelling in the Business of Books
 This article discusses the book business’ tradition of anecdotes and tale-telling in relation to a newer trend of corporate storytelling. Taking the example of Scots publishing house Canongate Books and its figurehead, star publisher Jamie Byng, as a starting point for discussion, I show how publishing houses can build publishing profiles/brand themselves with storytelling, and how, in this process, recurring narrative tropes and clichés are consciously linked to cultural values. This practise – comparable to the marketing strategies used by companies such as Swedish hamburger franchise MAX – is then used, I argue, by independent publishers to position themselves in a literary field characterised by increased polarisation.