Table 2- Definitions of storytelling (story & narrative) in or used by Management and Organization Studies (SOURCE is Boje, 2014a, and is adapted from Boje & Durant, 2006; Boje & Rosile, 2005, appendix; Boje, Rosile, Downs, Carlon, and Saylors, 2013). |
|
Source |
Definition |
Aristotle (350 BCE
1450b: line 25 p. 233) |
Narrative drama is different from epic story
and entire history. Narrative to be a proper "imitation of an action
that is complete in itself, as a whole of some magnitude... Now a whole is
that which has beginning, middle, and end". Narrative Poetics of plot,
characters, thought, dialog, rhythm, and spectacle |
Bakhtin, 1981: 60;
1973: 13, 26, 4 |
Story and narrative are different: ÒDialogic
manner of the storyÓ (1981: 60); ÒNarrative genres are always enclosed in a
solid an unshakable monological frameworkÓ (1973: 13); In dialogism there is a move beyond Òsystematic monological
philosophical finalizednessÓ (1973: 26); The
plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness and the genuine polyphony of full-valued
voicesÉ plurality of equal consciousness and their worldÓ (1973: 4). |
Barry & Elmes,
1997: 431 |
Ò[Stories are] thematic, sequenced accounts
that convey meaning from implied author to implied reader.Ó |
Benjamin (1936) |
Benjamin, 1936: 83-85, 91. Says, Òthe art of
storytelling is coming to an endÓ (83) because Òthe moral worldÉ overnight
has undergone changes which were never thought possibleÓ (84). ÒExperience
which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers
have drawnÓ (84). ÒIf peasants and seamen were past masters of storytelling,
the artisan class was its universityÓ (85). ÒIt is lost because there is no more
weaving and spinning to go on while they [stories] are being listened toÓ
(91, bracketed addition, mine). ÒThe storytelling that thrives for a long
time in the milieu of work-the rural, the maritime, and the urban-is itself an artisan form of communication, as it wereÓ (91). |
Berry, 2001: 59 |
ÒA story is defined as explanations offered
by multiple same-firm respondents to explain firm behaviors, processes, or
relationships.Ó |
Boje, 1991: 111 |
Ò[A story is] an oral
or written performance involving two or more people interpreting past or
anticipated experience.Ó (1991: 111); ÒA terse
telling is an abbreviated and succinct simplification of the story in which
parts of the plot, some of the characters, and segments of the sequence of
events are left to the hearer's imaginationÓ (Boje, 1991) |
Boje, 1995: |
ÒStorytelling organization É a collective
system in which the performance of stories is a key part of members'
sensemaking and a means to allow them to supplement individual memories with
institutional memory." |
Boje 2001: 1, 4 |
ÒI give ÔantenarrativeÕ a double meaning: as
being before and as a betÓ and Òpre-storyÓ with systemic import (Boje, 2001:
1). ÒAntenarrativeÓ is defined as Òthe fragmented,
non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted and pre-narrative speculation, a betÓ (1), a very improper story can be transformative
(4). |
Boje, 2014a | Defines storytelling is the interplay of grand narratives (epistimic & empiric narratives) with living stories where antenarrative processes BEFORE-narrative coherence & BETS ON FUTURE connect between living stories and grand narratives; Source: Boje, D. M. (2014a) Storytelling in Organizaitons: Managing in the Quantum Age. London: Routledge. |
Boyce, 1995: 107 |
Ò[S]torytelling
(..) [is] a symbolic form by which groups and
organizational members construct shared meaning and collectively centre on
that meaning.Ó |
Bruner, 1986: 15 |
Aspires to be one of the Òstory grammariansÓ who study
minimal structure necessary to create story. |
Burke, 1945 |
BurkeÕs narrative dramaturgy turns six
Aristotelian elements into five (the Pentad) by combining dialogue and rhythm
into ÔagencyÕ, and inventing new labels for the other elements: plot becomes
act, character becomes actor, theme becomes purpose, dialogue, and spectacle
becomes scene. This allows for various ratios to be studied, of which the
most popular is the scene-act ratio. |
Cox, 2006 |
Native American scholar James Cox (2006)
looks at narrative (in the tradition of Euro-American enterprise of Russian formalist
Sjuzhet/Fabula duality) as "tools of domination: (p. 24), and a
"colonial incursion" (p. 25). |
Czarniawska,1997: 78;
1998: vii; Czarniawska, 1999: 63). |
Ò- ÒA story consists of a plot comprising
causally related episodes that culminate in a solution to a problemÓ
(Czarniawska, 1997: 78) Ò[Stories are] texts that present events developing
in time according to (impersonal) causes or (human) intentions.Ó (1998); data that is merely chronologically ordered can be said
to constituteÉ 'a story without a plot' (1999). |
Derrida, 1979:
99-100; 94 |
Derrida treats story and narrative as quite
different. Each ÒstoryÓ (and each occurrence of the word
Òstory,Ó (of itself), each story in the story) is part of the other, makes
the other part (of itself), is at once larger and smaller than itself,
includes itself without including (or comprehending) itself, identifies
itself with itself even as it remains utterly different from its homonym.
(Derrida, 1979: 99-100). ÒÉ The question-of-narrative covers with a
certain modesty a demand for narrative, a violent putting-to-the-question an
instrument of torture working to wring the narrative out of one as if it were
a terrible secret in ways that can go from the most archaic police methods to
refinements for making (and even letting) one talk that are unsurpassed in
neutrality and politeness, that are most respectfully medical, psychiatric,
and even psychoanalyticÓ (Derrida, 1979: 94). |
Dundes,
1965 |
American Folklorist
Alan DundesÕmethod was comparative analysis,
tracing local ideological (or values) modifications in texts in their
migration from region to region, and nation to nation. He countered the nostalgic claim
that premodern (subaltern & illiteracy) folklore oral tradition was
rooted out by modernity. Dundes expanded ÔfolkÕ
from ÔpeasantÕ to include any cultural groupÕs oral traditions and texts,
whatever the socioeconomic background. The extension from rural to urban, in
particular opened up space for organizational folklore. Dundes
identified functions of folklore: as social protest; counter-hegemonic
expression; ethnic, gendered and sexualized power relations |
Fisher, 1984, 1985a,
b, 1989 |
Walter FisherÕs Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) is a
mental representation narrative-mirror-model of storytelling, that argues
that people as Ôstorytelling animalsÕ attempt to tell a Ôcredible,Õ
Ôcomprehendible,Õ and ÔcoherentÕ stories in a Ôstorytelling worldÕ that has
ample story listening and story evaluation competencies |
Gabriel, 2000, pp. 5,
239 |
ÒI shall argue not all narratives are
stories; in particular, factual or descriptive accounts of events that aspire
at objectivity rather than emotional effect must not be treated as storiesÓ
(Gabriel 2000: 5) ÒStories
are narratives with plots and characters, generating emotion in narrator and
audience, through a poetic elaboration of symbolic materialÓ (italics in
original) |
Holten
Larsen, 2000: 197 |
ÒA corporate story is a comprehensive
narrative about the whole organization, its origins, its vision, its
mission.Ó |
Garfinkel, 1967: 17 |
Ethnomethodologist
Harold Garfinkel , ÒThese whatever bits and pieces
that a story É might make intelligible are used to formulate a recognizably
coherent, standard, typical, cogent, uniform, planful, i.e. a professionally
defensible, and thereby, for members, a recognizably rational account of how
society worked to produce those remains.Ó |
King, 2005 |
Native American scholar Thomas King argues
that story shapes identity differently from narrative. In particular the
Indian identity concocted in American-European ethnology, folklore,
anthropology, history, and other narrative-literature --- is being challenged
by Native storywriters. |
James, 1907: 98 |
American
pragmatist William James has this to say about how Òthings tell a storyÓ:
ÒTheir parts hang together so as to work out a climax. They play into each
otherÕs hands expressively. Retrospectively, we can see that altho no
definite purpose presided over a chain of events, yet the events fell into a
dramatic form, with a start, a middle, and a finish.
In point of fact all stories end; and here again the point of view of a many
is the more natural one to take. The world if full of partial stories that
run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times. The mutually
interlace and interfere at points, but we can not unify them completely in
our mindsÉ.Ó |
Levin, 2000, p. 102 |
ÒWhile [most] vision statements are typically
an endless stream of nouns, the vision story freely uses verbsÉ Analogies and
metaphors are useful techniques to enrich the story; e.g., Ôcustomers are
treated like members of our family,Õ etc.Ó |
Lucius & Kuhnert, 1999: 77 |
Constructive-developmental theory.. [Uses story to develop meaning making]; "by
understanding the ways in which one frames his relationship with others and
the world around him, organizations can customize interventions to the needs
of their members and facilitate their intellectual and moral growthÓ (1999,
p. 77). |
Martin, 1982: 255 |
ÒStories recount incidents that appear to be
drawn accurately from an oral history of the organizationÕs past.Ó ÒAn organizational story focuses on a single, unified sequence of
events, apparently drawn from the institutionÕs historyÓ (Martin, Feldman,
Hatch & Sitkin, 1983: 439) |
McCloskey, 1990: 22 |
ÒContinuity and discontinuity are narrative
devices, to be chosen for their storytelling virtues' |
Norman, 1998: 156 |
É 'recounting the
past in the form of a story inevitably imposes a false narrative structure
upon it.' |
Polkinghorne, 1988:
36 |
Ò[A story] serves as lens through which
the apparently independent and disconnected elements of existence are seen as
related parts of a whole.Ó |
Propp,
1928 |
Russian formalist Vladimir Propp analyzed 150 Russian folk tales, classifying them
into thirty-one narrative functions distributed among seven dramatis
personae. |
Ricoeur, 1984: 150 |
ÒA story describes a sequence of actions and
experiences done or undergone by a certain number of people, whether real or
imaginary. These people are presented either in situations that change or act
as reacting to such change. In turn, these changes reveal hidden aspects of
the situation and the people involved, and engender a new predicament
which calls for thought, action, or both. This response to the new
situation leads the story towards its conclusion.Ó |
Selznick, 1957: 151 |
Institutional stories are about competences,
Òefforts to state, in the language of uplift and idealism, what is
distinctive about the aims and methods of the enterprise.Ó |
Shklovsky |
Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky
put fabula and sjuzhet in a dualistic relationship evolving towards a finished
narrative form. Fabula is defined
as the what, the chronological
sequence of actual events in multi-dimensional time, of which few events, and
only the thin temporal sequence are picked up in the final form of narrative.
Sjuzhet is the how, the plot, or contrived re-presentation (not merely description of events), taking
rhetorical control of event chronology (fabula) through shifting points of
view, and re-ordering (compressing or transposing) the temporal sequence
(flashback or flash-forward). |
Silko,
1981 |
Native American scholar, Leslie Marmon Silko says narrative sjuzhet/fabula
split in Russian formalism tends to turn native story into museum artifacts,
as archetype narratives devoid of "harsh realities of hunger, poverty
and injustice" (p. 280), and that Native story traditions were
"erroneously altered by the European intrusion - principally by the
practice of taking the children away from the tellers who had in all past
generations told the children an entire culture, an entire identity of a
people" (p. 6). |
Thompson, 1946, 1950 |
American folklorist Stitch Thompson defined motif as "the smallest
element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition"
(1946:
415; 1950: 1137). One serious critique of the motif-index is that its text
fragments are dehistoricized. Another is that the
elements are decontextualized. |
Van Maanen, 1988: 45 |
Ò[A (realist) story is] an author-proclaimed description and something
of an explanation for certain specific, bounded, observed (or nearly
observed) cultural practices.Ó He uses a typology of stories, serials,
and themes (stories have plots, but serials and themes do not). |
Van Riel, 2000: 157 |
Ò[A corporate story] is a realistic and
relevant description of an organization, created in an open dialogue with
stakeholders the organization depends upon.Ó |
Weick, 1995: 127-9 |
ÒPeople think narratively rather than
argumentatively or paradigmaticallyÓ and Òorganizational realties are based
on narrationÓ, Òthe experience is filteredÓ by ÒhindsightÓ (127); Òtypically
searching for a causal chainÓ, Òthe plot follows - either the sequence
beginning-middle-end or the sequence situation-transformation-situation. But sequence
is the source of senseÓ (128); Òsequencing is a powerful heuristic for sensemakingÓ
(129) |
Whitney, 2000:
239-240 |
ÒStory telling is a way of giving voice to
one's identity and of taking one's place in the organizational world of
work.Ó
|
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For the references to these definitions, please see Boje, D. M. (2014a) Storytelling in Organizaitons: Managing in the Quantum Age. London: Routledge.
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