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Storytelling Organizations David M. Boje June 29, 1999
I want to introduce you to the game playing
among storytelling organizations (see Figure One below). The idea is to
theorize organizations as storytelling systems where stories are the currency
of exchange within and between them.
Storytelling
organization writers, theorize people as collectively storying and
then restorying their past, present, and future existence. They come at
the topic from a variety of philosophical position s. Here, we will mention
that Mary Boyce’s (1995) work on storytelling organization work is based
in social construction philosophy, Czarniawska’s (1997) Narrating Organization
bridges social construction with a Burkean scene-act ratio analysis, while
my own storytelling organization work is based more in critical postmodern
philosophy. It began as a mix of folklore and social construction and moved
to more poststructuralist, critical theory, and postmodern epistemologies
(myth in Boje, Fedor & Rowlan d, 1982; folklore and social construction
in Boje, 1991; critical postmodern in Boje 1994,1995,
1998 to g, 1999; hegemony of storytelling in Boje, Luhman & Baack,
1999).
My interest in storytelling organizations
grew out of a myth-making paper I did for Lou Pondy in 1976, that I redrafted
with Fedor and Rowland (1982). The idea was that organizations are replete
with competing ideologies and goals that result from the uncertainty pervading
them. Myth making is an adaptive way groups in organizations sustain logics
and shared meanings to make sense of events. Myths are ways to handle problematic
aspects of modern organizations. Myths narrow the horizon in which organiz
ational life is allowed to make sense. Myths collide and compete in the
ongoing negotiation of power and privilege among groups attempting to determine
the dominant myth-making systems. Myths create, maintain, and legitimate
past, present, and future acti ons and consequences. Myths have live cycles
of development, maturation, decline and reformulation. Such was the myth
making organizations.
In the 1990s, I refined a storytelling
organization as "collective storytelling system in which the performance
of stories is a key part of members’ sense-making and a means to allow
the to supplement individual memories with institutional memory& quot;
(1991: 106; 1995: 1000). It is the collective rehistoricizing (memory)
of the institution, the ongoing (re)negotiation as the present is unfolded
into the past (attention), and the (re)visioning (expecting) the future
(Boje, 1994). Gephart (1991: 37 ) in a study of leader succession defines
storytelling organization as "constructed in the above succession stories
as a tool of program for making sense of events." Mary Boyce (1995) has
done a study of storytelling organizations. Storytelling organizations
struggle to get the stories of insiders and outsiders straight, to market
firms like Disney to customers (guests), investors, vendors, and employees
(cast members). By 1995, I had moved away form social construction in favor
of more postmodern formulations of storytelling organizations.
Disney
Storytelling Organization and its Publics My study of Disney (1995)
used deconstruction and postmodern theory to demythologize the official
founding stories of Walt and the Magic Kingdom by juxtaposing counter-narratives.
For example, pla cing Disney’s official story in juxtaposition to marginal
or excluded stories of strikes, reprimands, and Tayloristic practices.
The supplement narratives were not added to some "pure" original or founding
narrative the counter-narratives occur red along side the official story.
Storytelling Organization Consulting
A dear friend of mine, Michael Kaye worked with my myth and story writings
and worked them into a successful consulting practice. "Stories can shape
the culture of organizations. Through stories and myths, we can form images
of the organization and judge whether it is healthy or ailing. They tell
us about the people who are saving the organization and those who are bringing
it down…myths support rituals, communicate values and help leaders envisage
the future " (Kaye, 1996: 63).
Mary Boyce (1995b) has done excellent review on storytelling organization theory from a social construction perspective.
In Swedish organization-as-theater, managers
are expected to integrate their character and role in terms of agency and
purpose, and not to act as their own self-promoting agent. Leaders
of modern organization-as-theater are expected to play the good guy in
progressive (myth) scenes of material accumulation, achieving purpose in
highly complex spectacles of production and consumption. The modern stage
is set as progress or de cline and the leader is expected to just play
the prescribed role with "the consistency required between the stage, the
actor, and the act" (Czarniawska, 1997: 35).
Extending Storytelling Organization
Theory to Multiple Interacting Organizations
1. Multiple Storytelling Organization Research Boje, Luhman and Baack (1999) did a study
of the hegemonic aspects of interacting storytelling organizations. The
perspective taken in the paper extends earlier work on the "storytelling
organization" by look ing at the encounters of QM, Choral Company, Academy,
and JMI as four storytelling organizations that are co-negotiating, co-constructing,
and co-shaping the "telling" of each others stories. Multiple and simultaneous
storytellers and story-rea ders selected, transformed, and reformed stories
in the storytelling organization.
In 1998, I did a series of Nike
and the activists articles (see dark side) to show
the relationship between multiple storytelling organizations. Philip Knight’s
Nike is a "storytelling organization" as are the web-bases activists’ storytelling
organizations. The Nike storytelling organization constructs through storied
sense making practices i ts very legitimacy to employ young, female Asian
workers to accumulate billions in capital. But, activist entrepreneurs
are also virtual storytelling organizations, using the Internet to assemble
delegitimation stories to damage the integrity of Nike,
crafting stories to purposely deconstruct the dominant ideology and institutional
memory of Nike, who they frame as Wile Coyote. Activists also provoke print
media coverage, letter w riting campaigns, and annual worldwide boycotts
of Nike products. Nike focuses on how well paid their employees are and
how much better the working conditions are now than in the past.
From a Marcuse perspective, to understand
Nike we need to go beyond categorizing Nike as positive or negative, and
trace the process by which Nike is transforming into something other than
what we see here and now. What we see here and now is a Nike th at is replete
with contradiction; between espouse and actual conduct; between public
relations smokescreens and workers' life space; between Phil Knights' billions
and Lap Nguyen's meager wages. Nike is both itself and its opposite.
My focus in this work has been to look
at inter-relationships of multiple storytelling organizations. Figure One,
for example, models the network of relationships among the four types of
storytelling organizations (N, S, A, M) which are the focus of th is study.
Since I can not reproduce the figure on the web, you have to imagine storied
communication relationships between these six STOs. There is a figure with
(N-1) fifteen lines of relationship.
My purpose is to trace the ways in which
the network of multiple storytelling organizations (Nike, Media, Activists,
Studiers), workers (domestic and Third World), and consumers (including
stockholders and retailers) circulate and spin stories to influ ence one
another. The six nodes combine four types of storytelling organizations
(N, S, A, M) and two clusters (C, W) which behave similarly in terms of
storytelling behavior. There are weak lines of little or no direct communication
between Nike and the activists; they rely upon weak third party ties. Nike
and the Activists both court the Media and the Studiers. There are also
weak ties between workers, investors, and customers who rarely see on another,
but rely upon the other storytellers in the netwo rk to keep them informed
(i.e. M, N, S, and sometimes A).
Figure One: Network of STOs (this is better drawn out as a set of circles with intersecting relationships, but I could not reporduce this on the web). |
| Nike
(Phil Knight, Subcontractors, Niketowns, Stars) |
Workers
(Domestic, Third World, with and without union representation)
|
| Media
(Paper, Web, TV, Film, Editorials, cartoons) |
Studiers
(Academic, Consulting, Auditors)
|
|
Activists (Dedicated Web, Associated- Religious, Unions Seeking labor reform, anti-sweatshop, and environment)
|
Consumers (Stockholders, Retail Outlets, Governments)
|
| For example, C
represents customers, stockholders, and independent retail outlets which
receive stories but, as a rule do not originate stories (an exception is
when activists organize consumers into protests which become media events).
Consumer s have weak ties to W and A. This network structure
also involves processes. There are stockholders which both N and
A want to attract to their point of view.
One process I am exploring in Figure One
is how stories are passed along relational ties as the spin changes depending
upon the audience and the aspects of the story the teller elects to accent.
For example, in the pathway (2, 14, 15) Nike can const ruct a press release
to the media (M), which can be spun into a revised story told by
activists (A) to studiers (S) who subscribe to a list serve.
The activist tale can be combined with worker reports (W) and then released
back to th e media (M) and become part of news accounts which proceed
along one or two way ties to consumers (12), academics (13), and Nike (2).
Resistance occurs as counter stories and
story spins are constructed and retold along alternate pathways to attempt
to change the balance of power relationships. Nike, for example, has more
power to construct stories of the worker that script worker b ehavior.
W, however, can resist N by creating ties to A, S,
and M because these stories, in turn affect C which can then
affect N’s reputation and subsequent market share from C.
The activists (A) seek to tell stories in ways that get picked up
by S and M which can reach the media in order to create an
impact upon C which will affect N’s power over W.
The STO network is a dynamic
system. For example, as a story is released by M or A, N reacts by contracting
a counter-story from S, releasing a press release, or pumping up diversionary
ad campaigns that can affect C. As N releases new press releases to the
media , annual reports to stockholders, ad campaigns to customers, and
consultant studies to the academy, the A and M report on N’s defensive
posturing. N, in turn releases stories of A’s behavior in the overall system.
2. Extending Storytelling Organization Research with Latour Bruno Latour’s work speaks to the historical
and political aspects of storytelling organizations (see Boje, 1994:
437-9). Stories have a disciplinary effect.
I hope this gives you some idea of the
new developments in storytelling organization theory and some of the new
research directions.
References Boje, D. M. 1991 "Organizations as Storytelling Networks: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm." Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 106-126. 1998a
Amos Tuck's Post-Sweat Nike Spin Pp 618-623. In Business Research Yearbook:
Global Business Perspectives, Vol. V. Biberman, J . & Alkafarji, A
(Eds.).
1998b
Wile Coyote Meets the Road Runner Paper presentation to the Sun Break Conference,
Chaos and Complexity, chaired by Janice Bl ack, Las Cruces, NM, February
at New Mexico State University.
1998c
What Postmodern Philosophers Have to Contribute to Knowledge Researchers
Paper presented to INFORMS (Institute for Ope rations Research and Management
Sciences) conference, Seattle, WA, October (click on David’s
presentation)
1998d
A Wicked Introduction to the Unbroken Circle Conference: International
Business & Ecology. P. v-xiii. In Internationa l Business and Ecology
Research Yearbook.
1998e
How Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy can Unmask Nike's Labor Practices
presented to the Critical Theory pre-conference of the Academy of Management
meetings, San Diego, CA, August 8.
1998f
Nike, Greek Goddess of Victory or Cruelty? Women's Stories of Asian Factory
Life Published (October) in Journal of Organi zational Change Management.
Vol 11(6):461-480. . Also a book chapter for Usha C.V. Haley (ed.) in Perspectives
on Asian Management.
1998g.
The Swoosh Goddess is a Vampire: Nike's Environmental Accounting Storytelling.
Pp. 23-32. In International Business and Ecology Research Yearbook. IABD
Publication.
1999
New Is Nike Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote? A Postmodern Organization Analysis
of Double Logic, published in Journal of Busi ness & Entrepreneurship.
Special Issue (March, Vol II) 77-109.. This is an analysis of the relationship
between Nike activists and Nike. This is a pre-publication draft.
Boje, David, Donald B. Fedor, and Kendrith M. Rowland. 1982 "Myth making: A qualitative step in
OD interventions". Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 18:
17-28.
Boje, D.M., Luhman, J. & Baack, D. 1999 "Hegemonic stories and encounters between storytelling organizations."
Journal of Management Inquiry, 8(4): 340-360. Boyce, M. 1995a "Collective centering and collective sense-making in the stories and storytelling of one organization." Organization Studies. 16 (1). 107-137. Czarniawska, B. 1997a Narrating the Organization: Dramas
of Institutional Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gephart, R. P. 1991 "Succession, sensemaking, and organizational
change: A story of a deviant college president." Journal of Organizational
Chage Management. 4: 35-44.
Kaye, M. 1996 Myth-makers and story-tellers.
Sydney, NSW, Australia: Business & Professional Publishing Pty Ltd
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