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 ; Boje 2011

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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