Using narrative theory, this paper explores strategic management as a form of fiction. After introducing several key narrative concepts, it discusses the challenges strategists have faced in making strategic discourse both credible and novel and considers how strategic narratives may change within the "virtual" organization of the future. A number of narratively oriented research questions and methodological suggestions are provided.
Explores how developments in the ground‐breaking field of narrative family therapy might be applied to organizational change efforts. After an introductory discussion of some of narrative therapy’s key orientations and practices (e.g. postmodern notions of language and power, influence mapping, problem externalization, unique outcomes, audiencing), an extended example is given where a narrative approach was used to effect change in a health‐care organization. The case is used to generate a series of research questions and directions.
This article introduces symbolic constructivism, a qualitative research approach that uses artlike, nonroutine portrayal (e.g., sculpture, photographs, drawings, dramatization, etc.) to elicit, challenge, and shift existing sense-making frameworks. Unlike art-based methods that rely on expert interpretation, symbolic constructivism stresses the development of intersubjective understanding; researcher and respondent interpretations interact to create multiple forms of meaning. After introducing the approach and discussing its connections to other informing frameworks (notably symbolist thought, constructivism, hermeneutics, art therapy, and visual sociology), some methodological guidelines are developed that revolve around the kinds and degrees of change sought by inquiring parties.
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