Narratives in Social Science Research

Czarniawska, Barbara

doi:10.4135/9781849209502

Cited by 1,529 publications

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We interpret the ways that members of the organization made sense of the changes, through the stories they told about it (Czarniawska, 2004;Weick, 1995); thus, our methodology is narrative. Specifically, we demonstrate how storytelling in V-tech became dominated by a strongly centred narrative (Boyce, 1995) of inevitable decline that was widely shared across the organization -a narrative charting a 'fall from grace' in which the passage from previous success to current failure was understood fatalistically (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2009

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ABSTRACT. Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2009

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“…When all material was gathered and organized case by case, the whole mass of text was studied and ordered chronologically to provide an understanding of the implementation processes in the two CAs [21]. The chronological order also facilitated a reading of the material as two separate narratives, incorporating how the implementation processes started and developed, and how the respondents talked about them [23].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Interorganizational Cooperation in Labour Market Reintegration: A Case Study

Ståhl

2011

J Occup Rehabil

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“…In the mid-1990s, organisational ethnography as a methodology took root in organisation studies at the same time when cultural anthropology was experiencing what was later called the "narrative turn", which appeared in organisation studies slightly later (Czarniawska 2004). After what seemed to be a moment of separation, both disciplines have, with the narrative turn, been diverging and converging in their practices and conceptions of organisational ethnography.…”

Section: Convergences In the Context Of The Separationmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than a method? Organisational ethnography as a way of imagining the social

Gaggiotti

Kostera

Krzyworzeka

2016

Culture and Organization

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The authors -two anthropologists and an organisational theorist, all organisational ethnographers -discuss their understanding and practices of organisational ethnography as a way of imagining and reflect on how similar this understanding may be for young organisational researchers and students in particular. The discussion leads to the conclusion that organisational ethnography may be regarded as a methodology but that it has a much greater potential when it is reclaiming its roots: to become a mode of doing social science on the meso-level. The discussion is based on an analysis of both historical material and the contemporary learning experiences of teaching organisational ethnography as more than a method to our students.Keywords: organisational ethnography; anthropology; teaching and learning organisational ethnography, sociological imagination; ethnographic imagination; research methods Word count: 7,917 1 We would like to thank the anonymous Reviewers and the Editor for their thoughtful comments which helped us to considerably improve this article.As a science, organizational ethnography needs to be concerned with creating systematic generalizations about "how the world works". It needs to be theoretically informed and informing; it needs to contribute to the broader body of knowledge which constitutes organization and management studies. It enables theoretical, rather than empirical, generalizations to be made. (Watson 2011, 209)

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Narratives in Social Science Research

Cited by 1,529 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Implementing Interorganizational Cooperation in Labour Market Reintegration: A Case Study

More than a method? Organisational ethnography as a way of imagining the social

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