Narratives We Organize By

Editors

Barbara Czarniawska | Goteborg University, Sweden

Pasquale Gagliardi | ISTUD, Milan-Stresa and The Cini Foundation, Venice, Italy

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This book is a collection of texts that explore the analogy between organizing and narrating, between action and text. The raw material of everyday organizational life consists of disconnected fragments, physical and verbal actions that do not make sense when reported with simple chronology. Narrating is organizing this raw and fragmented material with the help of such devices as plot and characters. Simultaneously, organizing makes narration possible, because it orders people, things and events in time and place. The collection, written by organization researchers from many different countries, explores this analogy in both directions, reporting studies that show how narratives are made in situ, and applying narrative analysis (structuralist and poststructuralist) to stories already in existence.

Barbara Czarniawska is Skandia Professor of Management Studies at GRI, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden.

Pasquale Gagliardi is Professor of Sociology of Organization at the Catholic University of Milan, and Managing Director of ISTUD- Istituto Studi Direzionali, Milan-Stresa, Italy.

[Advances in Organization Studies, 11] 2003. x, 276 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/aios.11

Table of Contents

Introduction

Barbara Czarniawska and Pasquale Gagliardi | pp. vii–ix

Part 1: Structuralist approaches to narrative analysis

Sensegiving and sensemaking in an integration process: A narrative approach to the study of an international acquisiton

Anne-Marie Søderberg | pp. 3–35

Narrative institutions we organize by: The case of municipal administration

Daniel Robichaud | pp. 37–53

Part 2: Poststructuralist approaches to narrative

Re-navigating management theory: Steering by the star of Mary Follet

Nanette Monin and John Monin | pp. 57–74

The body of the text and the ordinary narratives of organisation

Heather Höpfl | pp. 75–92

Part 3: Genre analysis

How can strategy be a practice? Between discourse and narration

Valérie-Inès de la Ville and Eléonore Mounoud | pp. 95–113

Narratives of organizational performance

Hervé Corvellec | pp. 115–133

Part 4: Stories help to understand

The Schweik Syndrome: The narrative power of resistance by agreement

Paul M. Hirsch and Hayagreeva Rao | pp. 137–148

Detective stories and the narrative structure of organizing: Towards an understanding of organizations as texts

Gerardo Patriotta | pp. 149–170

Part 5: Getting help from the stories of the future

From naked emperor to count zero: Tracking knights, nerds and cyber-punks in identity narratives of freelancers in the IT-field

David Metz | pp. 173–191

Narrating the future of intelligent machines: The role of science fiction in technological anticipation

Brian P. Bloomfield | pp. 193–212

Part 6: Narrating ourselves

Ticking time and side cupboard ...: The journey of a patient

Sudi Sharifi | pp. 215–235

Fluid tales: A preservation of self in everyday life

Robert Grafton Small | pp. 237–245

About the authors and the editors | pp. 247–250

Name index | pp. 267–271

Subject index | pp. 273–275

“[...] the editors succeed not only in offering us more insight into complex processes of sense making in organizations. Their book also presents different ways to analyze empirical data to such organizational processes in organizations by using narrative approaches.”

Eugène Loos, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, in Organization Studies 25(5), 2004

“This is a truly fascinating book, a rich tapestry of interwoven lines of argument which take as their point of departure the organizing qualities of narrative and reach a destination in the narrative qualities of organizing. There are many real gems in this collection, and different readers will discover many different insights that challenge them, intrigue them and enchant them. This is a book that will immediately appeal to people who are both lovers of narratives and scholars of organizations.”

Yiannis Gabriel, Professor of Organizational Studies, Imperial College, London

Cited by

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Bartel, Caroline A. & Raghu Garud

2009. The Role of Narratives in Sustaining Organizational Innovation. Organization Science 20:1 ► pp. 107 ff.

Bencherki, Nicolas & François Cooren

2011. Having to be: The possessive constitution of organization. Human Relations 64:12 ► pp. 1579 ff.

Boswell, John

2013. Why and how Narrative Matters in Deliberative Systems. Political Studies 61:3 ► pp. 620 ff.