Flexing the Imagination

Bullying Targets as Social Performers in the Public Administration Workplace

“…The vignette is offered with the intention of presenting the target's perspective of being bullied, and to illustrate what the target's social performances might be in response to that bullying. 1 While a full analysis of the value of fiction, creative nonfiction, and creative writing techniques to present scholarly research is also beyond the scope of this article, I can confirm that scholars have been doing this successfully for years (see, e.g., Caulley, 2008;Ellis & Bochner, 2003;Furman, Lietz, & Langer, 2006;Glesne, 1997;Gutkind, 2009;Harold, 2003;Ketelle, 2004;Spindler, 2008;Vickers, 2010bVickers, , 2011Whiteman & Phillips, 2006). Fictional and other creative writing contributions have much to offer, especially when the researcher has both lived and researched the phenomenon under review.…”

Taking a compassionate turn for workers with multiple sclerosis (MS): Towards the facilitation of management learning

“…These creative excursions have been going on for decades and include: using existing fiction in scholarly work (Czarniawska, 2006(Czarniawska, , 2008Rhodes and Brown, 2005), autoethnographic accounts (Ellis and Bochner, 2003), the development of creative non-fiction or semi-fiction (Caulley, 2008;Gutkind, 2009;Ketelle, 2004;Vallant, 2005;Whiteman and Phillips, 2006), research-based narrative fiction (Lewis, 1959;Rolfe, 2002;Rowland et al, 1990;Schmidt, 1981;Spindler, 2008;Vickers, 2006aVickers, , 2010Whiteman and Phillips, 2006), poetry (Clarke et al, 2005;Furman, 2006a, b;Glesne, 1997;Poindexter, 2002;Richardson, 1994;Szto et al, 2005) as well as other creative, imaginative, and artistic representations that have included the use of art (Finley and Knowles, 1995), imagination (Harold, 2003), and photography (Szto et al, 2005). Such ventures have been intended to engage people in the process of considering other peoples' truths and viewpoints while firing all of our imaginations (Goodin, 2000;Harold, 2003;Rowland et al, 1990;Spicer, 2010). These offerings make a distinctive contribution to scholarship (Spindler, 2008), while flexing our minds and sparking our curiosity-perfect vehicles for management learning.…”

Workplace Adversity

“…Narratives; short stories; re-storying of the self; portraiture; critical, reflective, and reflexive diaries and journals; fiction, semi-fiction, and creative nonfiction; poetry; and interpretation and interrogation of existing fiction all have been used to illuminate some of the many sensitive, painful, and fraught aspects of social and organizational life. Creative writing has been used by scholars dealing with challenging social and institutional phenomena, for decades (e.g., Cope et al 2015;Gutkind 2009;Harold 2003;Ketelle 2004;Phillips 1995;Rolfe 2002;Vickers 2011), but now forms part of a crucial paradigm shift being made around responses to adversity in organizational life.…”