Narrative, organizations and research

Abstract

Given the rapid expansion of narrative approaches in management and organization theory in recent years, this paper investigates the contribution of this literature to the understanding of organizations and processes of organizing. The paper tells the story of the development of narrative approaches in organizational theory. Narrative's contribution to substantive areas of organization theory is evaluated. These developments are then reviewed in relation to an ongoing tension between story and science. We conclude by contemplating some of the criticisms, and the future, of narrative research.

‘If I Should Fall From Grace…’: Stories of Change and Organizational Ethics

“…They were directed at encouraging respondents to outline the changes that had been undertaken, and to identify their assessment of their meaning for them and the organization (Rhodes and Brown, 2005a). Given what we already knew about the downsizing, we specifically asked all the respondents to discuss this aspect of the organization's activities and history.…”

“…However, even though much research has been conducted to show how 'stories can serve as means to provide legitimacy for organizational changes that might otherwise have been considered illegitimate, irrational or unnecessary' (Rhodes and Brown, 2005a, p. 173), less attention has been paid to their implications for organizational ethics (for exceptions see Humphreys and Brown, 2008;Kornberger and Brown, 2007;Rhodes and Brown, 2005b). Whilst there is a well-established literature on organizational storytelling (see Boje, 2001;Czarniawska, 1997Czarniawska, , 2004Gabriel, 2000;Rhodes and Brown, 2005a) and its relation to organizational change (Doolin, 2003;Feldman, 1990;Brown and Humphreys, 2003;Skoldberg, 1994;Stevenson and Greenberg, 1998) and power (Humphreys and Brown, 2002;Clegg, 1993;Mumby, 1987;Smith and Keyton, 2001), the place of ethics has remained relatively unexamined. Given that those who exercise power frequently claim ethical justification for their actions in terms of authoritative rhetoric through narratives (Collier, 1998), not the least in the everyday unfolding of organizational action (Kornberger and Brown, 2007), ethics can be regarded as the domain through which power asserts legitimacy (Byers and Rhodes, 2007).…”

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

“…It has now become widely accepted that, even if not accurate or "truthful," stories and narratives open valuable windows into a wide range of organizational phenomena, including culture, politics, knowledge management, group dynamics, and so forth (see, e.g., Rhodes and Brown 2005;Gabriel 1991a;Boje 1991). Thus, even researchers adhering to a predominantly positivist paradigm have found ways of identifying, collecting, and analyzing narratives as means of developing their research agendas.…”

Development of trust in the CEO-chair relationship

“…This form of interview was chosen because the very limited previous knowledge on the topic indicates that a flexible, explorative approach will best enable respondents to bring out their experiences of the most important relevant issues. In line with several authors (Polkinghorne, 1995;Rhodes and Brown, 2005;Heikkinen et al, 2014) we define a narrative as a contextual account of a sequence of events that have happened to people over time.…”

“…One benefit of the methodology is that the stories that the CEO and Chair tell about their relationship give us the opportunity to understand the meanings that they give to trust, and to examine the events and issues that may have contributed to the current level of trust in the relationship (Gergen and Gergen, 1988;Riessman, 2008). A narrative approach allows us to explore trust as a dynamic phenomenon that can increase or decline over the course of the relationship, and consequently we can bring out the plurality and processual characteristics of trust development in the CEO-Chair relationship (Polkinghorne, 1995;Rhodes and Brown, 2005). This narrative study takes narrative to be a textual account of a sequence of events (Polkinghorne, 1988;Gergen and Gergen, 2006;Riessman, 2008) concerning trust in the relationship as experienced and recounted by the CEO and Chair.…”