Organizational Narratives Research Articles

Agency and coping strategies for ethnic and gendered minorities at work

This study examines the comparative workplace experiences of twenty Muslim professional women from the United Kingdom and Australia classified as minorities in terms of their ethnic, religious, gender and migration status. Diversity as exclusion remains highly topical in extant diversity studies. For instance, Muslim migrants have often been stereotyped as sexually constrained, victimized, ignorant, poor, uneducated and tradition-bound. Muslim women may be highly discouraged if Western workplaces are not conducive to their social and cultural needs. By using human agency and coping theory, this study investigates the coping strategies of Muslim professional women, how they adapt, how they react and reflect on stressful workplace events such as discriminatory behaviour. Human agency theory provides a basis by which to explore agent responses to organisational narratives in this study. Overall, this study finds that active coping and planning to deal with stressful events is important for ethnic minorities and that emotion-focused coping is used when less active planning is prevalent. The study lends support to the triple jeopardy effects of race-related ethnicity, work practices and gender. The findings pose challenges for Western feminist theory in terms of the interface between gender and religion and the freedom of expression of individual agents in the workplace.

Finding an emergent way through transformational change: a narrative approach to strategy

ABSTRACTCurrent strategic media management has a tendency to draw on design or planning schools and focus primarily on competitive advantages, industry development, and strategic positioning. However, the way in which strategies emerge from everyday practices is poorly understood. To this end, we build a theoretical lens from the narrative approach to strategy-as-practice and the concept of “wayfinding”, and study how organisational narratives can help both managers and employees to construct meaning around emergent strategy during ongoing transformational change. Through interview data of an empirical case study, we identify narratives on three fronts – about (1) employees, (2) managers, and (3) the market – and elaborate on how these narratives may give meaning, offer guidance, and provide an actionable basis from which to find a way through ongoing transformational change. Our study contributes to the research on strategic media management by showing how narratives can help to make sense of emergent strategy and the way organisations find their way through ongoing change.

Narratives as Sources of Stability and Change in Organizations: Approaches and Directions for Future Research

Although narrative analysis has made significant advances in organization and management studies, scholars have not yet unleashed its full potential. This review provides an understanding of key issues in organizational narrative analysis with a focus on the role of narratives in organizational stability and change. We start by elaborating on the characteristics of organizational narratives to provide a conceptual framework for organizational narrative analysis. We elaborate on three key approaches to narrative analysis on stability and change: realist, interpretative, and poststructuralist. We then review several topic areas where narrative analysis has so far offered the most promise: organizational change, identity, strategy, entrepreneurship, and personal change. Finally, we identify important issues that warrant attention in future research, both theoretically and methodologically.

Narratives as Sources of Stability and Change in Organizations: Approaches and Directions for Future Research

Although narrative analysis has made significant advances in organization and management studies, scholars have not yet unleashed its full potential. This review provides an understanding of key issues in organizational narrative analysis with a focus on the role of narratives in organizational stability and change. We start by elaborating on the characteristics of organizational narratives to provide a conceptual framework for organizational narrative analysis. We elaborate on three key approaches to narrative analysis on stability and change: realist, interpretative, and poststructuralist. We then review several topic areas where narrative analysis has so far offered the most promise: organizational change, identity, strategy, entrepreneurship, and personal change. Finally, we identify important issues that warrant attention in future research, both theoretically and methodologically.

Automatic Generation, Creativity, and Production of Narrative Content

In accordance with the concept of this organized session, in this presentation, we will consider the study of automatic narrative or story generation as a research field of artificial intelligence (AI) at the levels of generation, creation, and production. Firstly, we study the technologies of narrative or story generation systems based mainly on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Next, the artistic and aesthetic problems of narrative creation are considered in terms of their relationships with technologies and systems of narrative generation. Further, issues of organizational or social narrative production are presented. The survey and discussion will be conducted based on topics in this session relating to game and advertising systems and our integrated narrative generation system.

Speaking Up on My Way Out the Door: A Close Examination of Church Exit and Members’ Dissent

This narrative study examines the lived experience of leaving a church and the members’ communication of dissatisfaction as part of that experience through participant stories. Situated within Jablin’s (2001) organizational exit framework, this study included interviews (N = 22) with former members of multiple denominations of Christian churches. Results suggest several theoretical implications. First, the findings of this study suggest that narrative of the exit experience is excluded from grand organizational narratives within faith communities. Second, as members exit a faith community, they experience a tension between wanting to express dissent and a pressure to leave silently. Third, findings challenge current models of organizational exit, suggesting a view of exit that is tied both to organizational form and to the reach of the organization into the members’ lives.

The iconography of universities as institutional narratives

The coming of “brand society” and the onset of mediatization spur universities to strategize their visual identity and pay particular attention to their icon. Resulting from branding initiatives, university icons are visual self-representations and material-cum-symbolic forms of organizational identity. In this work we ask: What identity narratives are conveyed through the organizational iconography of universities? How do narratives combine in this iconography? Drawing upon content analysis of Internet front-page icons of 826 universities from 22 countries, we identify four identity narratives: guild-like classic narrative, professional scientific narrative, localized narrative, and organizational narrative. Second, we show that such visual self-representations of university identity appear as products of broad historical themes. Last, we consider the relations between the four visualized identity narratives, showing evidence for iconographic sedimentation between the compatible guild-like classical, professional, and local-national narratives, along with iconographic abrasion of the logic of managed organization on the former. We discuss such findings in relation to the historical studies of the institution of the university.

What have we learned so far? The development and application of an organisational learning narrative

The use of narratives and stories has been growing in popularity in the field of knowledge management. Narratives may be used as useful vehicles for several knowledge-based activities within organisational (and other) contexts. These include acquiring and sharing knowledge in the form of personal experiences; the storage of explicit knowledge; and significantly, the development of personal knowledge and understanding through the use of narratives for sense-making. This paper presents research into the development and application of a method for the construction of a ‘learning narrative’: an organisational narrative developed for the specific purpose of sharing experiential knowledge. The paper presents a rationale for the use of narratives within knowledge management; details a methodological approach for the development of learning narratives; and highlights a number of benefits of the use of learning narratives, notably their use in sustaining and enhancing the quality of project-based work.

Good jobs – but places for women?

This article is concerned with men and women's experience of elite positions and with the extent to which such positions are seen as places for women, so as to provide an insight into their commitment to continuing in them. Senior management in universities are elite positions in terms of income; those who occupy them are relatively powerful internally, although relatively powerless in relation to the state and the market. Drawing on a purposive study of those at the top three levels (i.e. presidential, vice-presidential, and dean) in public universities, it finds little difference between men and women's perceptions of the advantages/disadvantages of these positions. However, in a context where roughly four-fifths of those in university senior management are men [O'Connor, P. 2014. Management and Gender in Higher Education. Manchester: Manchester University Press.], at the level of organisational narratives and at the interactional level, gender differences persist. These differences are reflected in variation in commitment to continuing in senior management positions.

Securitization of LGBTIQ Minority in Serbian Far-right Discourses: A Post-structuralist Perspective

This article analyses the securitization of LGBTIQ population in the narratives of Serbian far-right organizations, i.e. the discursive construction of the LGBTIQ minorities as a threat. The analysis relies on securitization theory in order to demonstrate how the issue of gay rights is taken beyond ‘normal politics’ and constructed as a security issue. By drawing upon post-structuralist reading of securitization theory, this article argues that the narratives of Serbian far-right groups acquire legitimacy due to their coherence with the mainstream discourses on homosexuality and LGBTIQ rights. Moreover, it argues that through the securitization of sexual minorities in the far-right discourses, the Serbian national identity is being re-defined and strengthened. This article uses discourse analysis as main method. The sources of data include press statements and other media pieces, reports by civil society organizations and government institutions, public opinion surveys and websites of the far-right groups. The analysis is focused on the period from the adoption of the Anti-discrimination Law in 2009 onwards, as the period in which the issue of LGBTIQ rights has become increasingly topical in the Serbian public sphere.

Symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities: Part I

Symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities: Part I

Symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities: Part II

Symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities: Part II

An introduction to the symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities

An introduction to the symposium on change and evolving organizational narratives and realities

Identity after death: how legacy organizational identity and death form each other

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how legacy organizational identity and death relate to each other and, thereby, contribute to closing the gap in knowledge on organizational identity constructions in times of death.Design/methodology/approach– The paper opted for an exploratory study relying on primary data from in-depth narrative interviews with 20 organizational members of a bank that went bankrupt. The primary data, as well as documents like websites, newspapers, magazines, booklets, minutes, and reports, were complemented by secondary interviews with other members of the financial industry.Findings– The paper finds that members of a dead organization construct a bankruptcy narrative that is also a legacy organizational identity narrative including a legacy organizational identity transformation and several identities that have positive and negative aspects and are conflicting but integrated into a coherent narrative. Furthermore, the paper provides empirical insights on how members of a dead organization draw upon their legacy organizational identity to justify their (lack of) past interpretations and responses to an unfolding bankruptcy. Finally, it provides empirical evidence on ways that legacy organizational identity from a dead organization play a substantial role in a living organization.Research limitations/implications– Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability.Practical implications– The paper holds insight that can help practitioners understand members of a dying organization – including the ways they come to form and perform in a new organizational context; an understanding that is a prerequisite for helping and supporting these members in coming to perform satisfyingly in the new organization.Originality/value– This paper addresses an apparent gap in the literature on identity and death; exploring identity narratives in a bankrupted bank, the paper considers constructions of legacy organizational identities in times of disruptive death.

The creative use of the ADHD diagnosis in probationers' self-narratives

Drawing upon a narrative criminological theoretical framework, this article explores how probationers use the ADHD diagnosis in self-narratives. Eleven in-depth interviews with probationers diagnosed with ADHD were carried out, while the interviewees were under the supervision of the Danish Probation Service. The analysis of the empirical material shows that the ADHD diagnosis provides a context for their life that helps make sense of and explain their past. Although their self-narratives are in a sense personal stories, they relate ADHD as a neurobiological disorder to their criminal past, using the available cultural narratives (Loseke, D. R. (2007). The study of identity as cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives: Theoretical and empirical integrations. The Sociological Quarterly, 48, 661–688). Three types of co-existing self-narratives were identified: (1) ‘ADHD as my biological destiny’, (2) ‘It should have been discovered earlier in my life’ and (3) ‘I would not have been without ADHD’. As the probationers articulated all three narratives, the particular role of ADHD in the individual self-narratives was ambiguous. The probationers stated that they would not have missed the wild experiences of ‘living on the edge’, while at the same time describing ADHD as a determining factor for their life paths as criminals. Accordingly the probationers tended to explain not the individual offences, but their lives as criminals. Following this, the final section discusses whether their use of ADHD leads to crime-reducing ‘narratives of desistance’ or whether they instead represent crime-increasing ‘neutralization narratives’ (Maruna, S. (2001). Making good: How ex-convicts reform and reclaim their lives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; Maruna, S., & Copes, H. (2005). What have we learned from five decades of neutralization research? Crime and Justice, 32, 221–320).

The Role of Positive Psychological Capital Language in Crowdfunding Performance

Language conveying positive psychological capital reflects optimism, hope, resilience, and confidence. Use of this language in organizational narratives has been linked to key organizational outcom...

Tugging at Heartstrings: Narrative-Induced Emotion and Organizational Communication

IntroductionOrganizational communication plays a key role in shaping stakeholders' evaluations of firms (e.g. Massey, 2001; Deephouse, 2000). Indeed, such communication is often used strategically by corporate leaders to influence the attention, perceptions, and actions of several groups, including customers, employees, investors, and the media (Morsing, 2006; Higgins & Bannister, 1992). For instance, leaders attempt to influence stakeholders through traditional forms of communication contained in press releases (Henry, 2008), speeches (Den Hartog & Verburg, 1998), and annual reports (Yuthas, Rogers, & Dillard, 2002) and through more modern channels, such as company websites and social media (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).One form of communication that has a particularly potent influence on stakeholder perceptions is narratives, defined as communication consisting of a collection of actions and events arranged in a temporal sequence and possessing a causal explanation or plot (Onega and Landa, 1995). A vibrant body of research has demonstrated that narratives influence key stakeholder processes, such as sensemaking (Boyce, 1995; Boje, 1991), identification (Humphreys & Brown, 2002), and legitimation (Brown, 1998). For example, Martens, Jennings, and Jennings (2007) studied narratives in the corporate communication used during initial public offerings (IPOs) and found that the complexity and ambiguity of firm narratives contained in a venture's IPO prospectus had an impact on investors' resource decisions that was net of the influence of other, non-narrative information. However, virtually all work on narratives in management literature, including Martens and colleagues (2007), has focused on narratives' ability to influence stakeholders through cognitive mechanisms, such as categorization and legitimacy. Prior work has devoted almost no attention to how organizational leaders use narratives to influence stakeholders' emotional responses.The lack of attention to a narrative's connection to emotion is surprising because both the comprehension of narratives and the impact they have on audiences is not purely cognitive (Coplan, 2004). Work in disciplines outside of management, such as cognitive science (Hogan, 2003), film studies (Tan, 1995), and psychology (Miall & Kuiken, 2002), has found that emotion is one of the primary means through which narratives can impact audiences. Yet, the mechanisms by which communications influence the emotions of organizational stakeholders remain unexplored.To address this omission in prior work, this conceptual paper explores the following research question, How can communication produce emotional reactions in organizational stakeholders? In examining this question, the goal of this paper is to develop a preliminary theory detailing the precise mechanisms involved in narratives' influence on stakeholder It is argued that narratives will elicit emotion in organizational stakeholders through several specific elements of their content and structure. In addition, four general processes through which a can impact stakeholder emotion are identified. Thus it is argued that a can induce emotion through factors and processes residing in both the itself and in stakeholders. In addressing the unexplored link between organizational narratives and emotion, this conceptual paper draws from several streams of research in management, spanning from organizational behavior to strategic management, and also from a wide range of non-business disciplines. The paper also represents a contribution to theory and to the practice of management as it uncovers novel ways in which organizational leaders may change the persuasiveness of their communications.The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. First, before theorizing about the relationship between narratives and stakeholder emotion, it is important to establish conceptual clarity regarding what is meant by the terms narrative and emotion. …

Telling tales out of school: Sensemaking and narratives of legitimacy in an organizational change process

Summary In this study we take a critical sensemaking approach to investigate organizational narratives of change at a Canadian community college to show how individuals make sense of the change process. In particular, we draw upon the property of plausibility to show how the president and CEO of the college legitimized the change narratives by drawing on rhetorical strategies of legitimation, which resonated with sensemakers in the organization. As plausibility is enhanced through legitimation, individuals in the organization become engaged in a sensemaking process, which resonates with their experiences and organizational identity. We contend that the organizational narratives constructed through this sensemaking process reflect a legitimation of plausible meaning. Plausibility emerges in this case study as a critical element in the sensemaking process, and highlights the importance of narrative practices of legitimation in sensemaking around organizational change.

Succession Narratives in Family Business: The Case of Alessi

One of the most significant challenges facing family firms is how to successfully manage succession from one generation of leaders to the next. In this paper, we contribute to existing understandings of this complex and difficult process by exploring how successors use family business succession narratives to legitimate their succession. Building on a case study of Alessi, a family–owned Italian design firm, we draw on the literature on organizational narratives to develop a framework for understanding family business succession narratives and present a typology of some of the narrative strategies that can be used during succession. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical ramifications of a narrative view of succession in family firms.

A narrativa organizacional para a promoção do engajamento

Este trabalho analisa o papel das narrativas organizacionais para a promoção do engajamento. A investigação têm como focos a função argumentativa e a capacidade mobilizadora das narrativas produzidas pelas organizações e destinadas a seus públicos de interesse. Adota-se uma perspectiva interpretativa visando à compreensão das narrativas organizacionais, sua capacidade de argumentação e de mobilização para a ação, tendo como fundamento teórico os estudos sobre a narratologia, pela perspectiva da narrativa das organizações, a teoria do texto, a teoria da ação e a teoria dos atos de linguagem. Como objeto de estudo são analisados os materiais promocionais desenvolvidos pela Fondation Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) destinados a obter o apoio mecenas. Para tanto, a pesquisa apoia-se nas metodologias de análise de discurso e análise de conteúdo.