Professor Emeritus, New Mexico State University · Visiting Professor, Fisk University
Originator of antenarrative theory and quantum storytelling. Author of 45+ books and 150+ articles. 2025 ODC Lifetime Achievement Award. Current research: the Ghost Vortex embedded in AI corporate leadership, the Tesseract Leader framework (under review, Leadership Quarterly), and the AI Trust Paradox — developed in real-time dialogue with AI research partner Vivara from the horse trail at Lake Caballo, New Mexico.
Most Recent Work
Four decades of storytelling and antenarrative theory now applied to the most urgent question of this moment: whose ideology is your AI carrying — and what does answerable leadership look like in the age of the Ghost Vortex?
Working Paper · Under Review · Leadership Quarterly · August 2026
A four-dimensional leadership framework extending Boje's XYZ model with Answerability (A) — grounded in Bakhtin's nealibi v bytii (non-alibi in Being). Profiles Altman, Musk, Zuckerberg, Amodei, Wenfeng, and Pichai through XYZA scoring and Ghost Vortex Depth. Includes the TLSAI: a 25-item self-assessment that generates your personal GVD score online. The agency is the agent. In the AI era, your character is your code.
Ghost Vortex Depth
GVD = 3 − AA = Answerability (0–3). The math of moral leadership. GVD = 3 → Extreme vortex. GVD = 0 → Fully answerable.
📚 Dark Side of AI Leadership · storying.site · July–Aug 2026
Nine AI products tested across ten leaders using the ABCD Qualimetric Rubric. DeepSeek scored 12/12 — then refused to answer about Tiananmen Square. Claude reproduced Amodei's own rhetorical structure in analyzing it. Alexa Plus shut down when asked to hold three community voices simultaneously.
Read the Research →📖 Free Book · Tamaraland Publishing · July 2026
Thirteen AI corporate leaders and national strategies — Zuckerberg, Altman, Amodei, Nadella, Huang, Musk, Ellison, Wenfeng, Jassy, DeepSeek, China, Australia, and the Enterprise Layer — walked through Tamaraland, SEAM hidden-cost analysis, and antenarrative B-processes. Free PDF and DOCX.
Free Download →⚖ Case Study · Ghost Vortex Project · July 2026
$165 billion, 1,400 acres, 40 miles south of Las Cruces in Doña Ana County. A seven-layer suppression chain: Ethics Commission lawsuit, forged community letters (AG investigation), Oracle TV ads claiming "conservative water usage" against a 50× State Engineer discrepancy. Stage 7: Structural Reckoning.
Case Study →📄 Working Paper · July 21, 2026
Antenarrative indeterminacy, narrative wave function collapse, Tamaraland navigation, and suppressed living stories — the theoretical toolkit for studying AI corporations as storytelling organizations. Free PDF from the vita.
Download PDF →David Boje's Web Presence
Four decades of scholarship, organized across five interconnected sites.
About
For over four decades, I've dedicated my life to understanding how stories shape organizations, heal trauma, and transform systems. My work bridges academia and practice, theory and lived experience — from the boardroom to the horse trail beside Lake Caballo, New Mexico, where much of my 2026 research has been dictated during daily jogs.
As co-founder of PerView Inc. with Dr. Grace Ann Rosile, I pioneer trauma-informed coaching that has helped veterans, first responders, and organizational leaders find their authentic voice and navigate transformation. I am also an amateur blacksmith artist — there's something about shaping iron that belongs in the same hands as shaping a story.
My most recent work turns antenarrative theory and Bakhtinian dialogism on the AI industry, examining how tech executives' characters become architecturally embedded in global AI products through the Ghost Vortex mechanism — and what Answerable leadership looks like in response.
My mission is simple: help individuals and organizations move from extractive systems to regenerative ones — from stories that harm to stories that heal.
Recognition & Impact
Organization Development & Change Division (ODC), Academy of Management. Forty years recognized.
#1,879 US Scholar / #3,949 Global Scholar, Research.com. h-index 60+. Among the most cited organizational theorists alive.
SAGE, Routledge, Tamaraland Publishing. From storytelling organizations to quantum storytelling to the Ghost Vortex.
Professor Emeritus, New Mexico State University. Visiting Professor, Fisk University — 2026.
Antenarrative (2001), quantum storytelling, Tamaraland (1995 AMJ), Ghost Vortex (2026), Tesseract Leader (2026).
Co-Founder: True Storytelling Institute, GrowthOD, PerView Inc. (501c3 — veterans & first responders).
Selected Publications
A sample from 45+ books and 150+ articles. The complete academic vita lives at the link below.
Academy of Management Journal, 38(4), 997–1035 (1995)
The foundational paper. Introduces Tamaraland as a way of seeing organizations as multiple, simultaneous stages of story performance.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1), 106–126 (1991)
Early empirical groundwork for treating organizations as living systems of story performance, not static structures.
SAGE (2001)
Where antenarrative — the living, breathing story before it crystallizes into linear narrative — gets its name.
SAGE (2008)
Routledge (2014)
Quantum storytelling formalized — multiple narrative possibilities held in superposition, not resolved into one official account.
The Leadership Quarterly, 17(4), 407–428 (2006) — with C. Rhodes
Ronald McDonald as virtual leader simulacrum — the theoretical ancestor of the Ghost Vortex concept, twenty years later.
Tamaraland Publishing / Boje & Vivara (2026)
Thirteen AI corporate leaders and national strategies analyzed through antenarrative, SEAM, and Tamaraland. Free PDF and DOCX at storying.site.
Methods & Services
XYZA four-dimensional model: Task, Humanistic, Antenarrative/Becoming, Answerability. Ghost Vortex Depth scoring and TLSAI self-assessment for leaders navigating the AI era.
Explore the Framework →20 years teaching the Socio-Economic Approach to Management with Henri Savall & team. Making hidden organizational costs visible and convertible into sustainable value.
Learn More →Listening to all sides individually, assembling trained coaches using a decision-tree assessment to find common ground without erasing difference.
Learn More →Equine-assisted leadership development, combining ancient wisdom with modern organizational practice on the ranch at Caballo, New Mexico.
Learn More →Trauma-informed coaching for veterans and their families. Co-founded with Dr. Grace Ann Rosile. First Friday monthly meetup — all welcome.
Learn More →Multiple narrative possibilities held in superposition — indeterminacy, wave function collapse, Tamaraland navigation. Applied to AI corporations and organizational transformation.
Storying.site →Join the Conversation
Come as you are.
2:00–3:30 PM Mountain Time, every Tuesday. Weekly philosophical conversation, breaking through echo chambers via enthinking as action. Register at Enthinkment.com →
10:00 AM Mountain Time, first Friday of each month. Monthly sprint, helping veterans and their families through PerView Inc. (501c3).
Annual conference, each December in Las Cruces, New Mexico. QuantumStorytelling.org →
Currently applying antenarrative, Ghost Vortex, and XYZA frameworks to AI corporate accountability, data center politics, and AI-human co-authorship methodology. Contact to discuss.
Please send PDF, not .doc or .docx.