THE MORPHOLOGY OF STORIES THAT SPARK ORGANIZATIONAL RENEWAL

Abstract:

In a world of rapid and pervasive change, organizational renewal is a priority both for organizations and for individuals. Although narrative has the potential to make a major contribution to authentic organizational renewal, it has proved difficult to find meaningful examples where storytellers have successfully used classic narratives (‘well-told stories’) to accomplish it. Nevertheless the search should continue.

By contrast, the practitioner literature has suggested a number of examples of minimalist narratives contributing to organizational renewal. A preliminary morphology of such narratives is explored and Lotman’s theory of auto-communication provides an explanation as to why they work: listeners interpret the minimalist narrative with a new meta-story that sparks action. More research is needed on the extent to which minimalist narratives are effective in promoting organizational renewal, the conditions that are necessary for them to be effective, and the way in which auto-communication contributes to the result.

Author information:

Stephen Denning is a Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

He is the author of several books on business narrative,including The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007), The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and The Springboard (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000). His article, ‘Telling Tales’ was published by Harvard Business Review in May 2004.

An Australian national, he was born and educated in Sydney. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. He then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities. From 1996 to 2000, he was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he spearheaded the knowledge-sharing program.

In November 2000, he was selected as one of the world’s tenMost Admired Knowledge Leaders (Teleos). In December 2007, his book, The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2000) was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best business books of 2007.

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THE MORPHOLOGY OF STORIES THAT SPARK ORGANIZATIONAL RENEWAL

In 1987, Dennis Mumby noted that organizational narrativesconstitute a double-edged sword. “Although it is argued that narratives in organizations can be used as an ideological device to legitimate the meaning systems of dominant groups, narratives can also potentially de-legitimate dominant meaning systems. In this context, power becomes more than a phenomenon that is imposed on subordinate groups; it involves a ‘dialectic of control’ (Giddens, 1979, p. 72) in which even the ostensibly powerless can utilize organizational structure to their advantage.” (Mumby, 1987: 114)

Since then, researchers have explored how stories can legitimate or de-legitimate the dominant meaning systems of organizations, but have spent less time exploring how narrative can foster genuine organizational renewal.

The need to expand the research agenda is urgent from a variety of different perspectives. Most organizations are struggling with issues of how to survive and prosper in a world where change is pervasive and rapid. Managers are grappling with how to communicate authentically both with subordinates and with people over whom they have no hierarchical control. Staff frequently need to persuade theirmanagers to adopt more constructive modes of responding to the turbulent environment. Outsiders – clients, partners, change agents – are also searching for ways to influence organizations in constructive ways.

This paper explores the potential role of narrative, particularly storytelling, to contribute to understanding and resolving theseissues.

Literature review

Over the last thirty years, attention to narrative has steadily grown. Philosophers and psychologists argue that narrative is the foundation of human understanding and is integral to meaning-making, identity building and purposeful acting(e.g. Maclntyre, 1981; Bruner, 1986; Sarbin, 1986).

A body of research has shown how stories preserve dominant story patterns and how alternative interpretations are possible: e.g. how narrative is used as a tool of control (Wilkins, 1983); how narratives act as “social glue” (Smith & Simmons, 1983);how narrative acts as a tool of socialization (Brown, 1985); how a seemingly innocent narrative can reinforce the power structure (Mumby, 1987); how narrative communicates the organizational culture (Myrsiades 1987); how leadership texts and narratives have hidden sexual meanings that preserve the male power structure (Calas & Smircich, 1991; Martin, 1990); how Disney can be seen as an interplay of multiple competing narratives (Boje, 1995); how presenting the corporate activities ostensibly aimed at environmental sustainability as a journey may serve to reinforce business as usual (Milne, 2006); how MBA students use narrative to gain confidence, although their sponsoring organizations tend to limit the application of ideas learned (Sturdy, 2006).

Gabriel (2000) has also explored the notion of the "unmanaged organization," the realm of organizational stories where organization memberscan “affirm themselves as independent agents, heroes, survivors, victims, and objects of love rather than identifying with the scripts the organizations put in their mouths” (Gabriel, 2000: 129). This perspective tends to view storytelling in organizations as defensive: it is the "armor" of the oppressed (members of organizations) in the resistance against the control of the oppressors (organizations)(Drori, 2002).

Researchers have spent relatively less time examining the role of narratives as an active tool for transforming the dominant meaning systems of organizations. Exceptions include work on how stories help create and resolve political conflict in organizations (Feldman, 1990); how strategic management operates as a form of fiction (Barry et Elmes; 1997); how change communications can generate anti-stories (Beech 2000); how a narrative about the past was used at a high-tech firm to craft the future (O’Connor, 2000); how narrative is used to help launch an enterprise in the marketplace (O’Connor 2002); how a fictitious character -- Ronald McDonald – has been used by McDonald’s in an attempt to revitalize its strategic narrative and portray itself as an organizationcommitted to nutrition and fitness (Boje 2006a); and how external narratives generate auto-communication with employees (Morsing, 2006). Transportation theory offers an explanation of how stories lead to action (Green & Brock, 2000).

Researchers have focused both on stories-as-told in organizations and on meta-stories as to what those stories might mean to participants, or to participant-researchers, or to non-participant-researchers. These studies typically start from “the pluralism of the narrative form—the fact that there are multiple ways of interpreting a story—to uncover suppressed or hidden stories about, and to present alternative and often critical interpretations of, conventional storylines of a particular company, spokesperson, or message.” (O’Connor 2002)

Researchers tend to present meta-stories as revealing the “deep structure” of organizational reality (Myrsiades, 1987). To some observers, however, they reflect “a political bias, primarily a critical one, to the service of which both the methodology and interpretation have been put” (O’Connor, 2002). For many researchers, “anything that might directly or indirectlybecome useful to management came to be seen as tainted and compromised.” (Gabriel, 2005: 1427). The result has been “a lack of sustained dialogue with mainstream management and organization studies” (O’Connor, 2002).

The practitioner and the research literatures have tended to remain separate. The early work of practitioners also focused on the role of narrative in establishing and maintaining dominant meaning systems, albeit from a laudatory, rather than pejorative, viewpoint. Topics have included the use of narratives to create a strong organizational culture (Peters & Waterman, 1982) or to enable managers to to impart their messages more compellingly (Gardner, 1995; Tichy, 1998). More recently practitioners have begun to explore the role of narrative in transforming dominant meaning systems in constructive ways (Denning, 2000, 2005, 2007; Simmons 2000, 2007; McKee, 2003; Mathews & Wacker, 2007; Snowden & Boone, 2007; Guber, 2007).

Although most practitioners have focused on stories-as-told in organizations, there has been some discussion of the meta-stories that listeners read into minimalist narratives and that become the catalyst for action (Denning, 2000; 2005; 2007). This work has analogies to Jüri Lotman’s theory of auto-communication (Lottman, 1977; 1990), as explicated by Broms & Gahmberg (1983), Christensen (1995) and Morsing (2006).

Jungian analysis has also been deployed to understand the nature of archetypal stories and what they inspire in oneself, others, and whole social systems (Pearson, 1998) and how they build brands (Mark & Pearson, 2001)

Practitioners have sometimes ignored viewpoints other than those of management, and neglected the risk that inauthentic or implausible stories would lead to anti-stories and so have the opposite effect of what was intended (e.g. Tichy, 1998). On occasion, practitioners have also demonstrated an alarmingly casual attitude to veracity (e.g. Godin, 2005).

This paper seeks to draw on the strengths of both the practitioner and research literature while avoiding their respective weaknesses.

The nature of authentic organizational renewal

As a result of the convergence of powerful socioeconomic forces, rapid change is pervasive in organizations around the world.Accelerating economic and social shifts in the global economy, the consequent imperative for ever faster innovation, the emergence of global networks of partners, the rapidly growing role of intangibles, which can’t be controlled like physical goods, the increasing ownership of the means of production by knowledge workers, the escalating power of customers in the marketplace, and the burgeoning diversity in both the workplace and marketplace—all these forces mean that change is playing a much larger role in organizations than in the past.

For both managers and staffin organizations, the pace and pervasiveness of change offer threats and opportunities. Threats emerge in terms of the greater risk of individuals being treated as things rather than as people and having their lives randomly disrupted by decisions flowing from the organization’s struggle for survival. Opportunities for personal and professional growth in the radically shifting environment arise both for managers and for staff if they can understand what is happening, cope with the challenges while growing personally and professionally, and inspire others to do likewise.

The focus of this paper is on organizational change in the sense of renewal: i.e. change where both the organization and the people who work there prosper through seeing the future in authentically positive terms and acting energetically to accomplish that future, while, in the process, achieving both personal and professional growth. It concerns change as constituted by alterations in the storylines that contest the narrative space of organizations and beyond, as well as in the material and personal welfare of those involved. It explores how renewal can be authentically fostered.

The paperdoes not deal with coercive change, which typically leads to cynicism and organizational malfunction. It also ignores superficial, fictitious or phoney change: change where there is a semblance of change, but in fact little of substance is occurring. Nor will it discuss organizational change where deliberate deception is deployed.

The pitfalls of managerialism and anti-managerialism

A concern with the dehumanizing aspects of modern employment has led to the managerialist critique, which inter aliaexamines how narratives can be a subtle device for establishing, maintaining or reinforcing oppressive managerial practices.

However,“there is no generally agreed and precise definition of the term 'managerialist'” (Boje 2002). Boje defines “managerialist”as:“looking at organizational behavior and theory from exclusive point of view of managers, the functional agents of an administered society.”The anti-managerialist literature often examines organizations from the exclusive viewpoint of the marginalized and the oppressed (Boje, 2002; Boje, 2006b).

Viewing organizations from the exclusive viewpoint of any subgroup is necessarily distortive. Consequently this paperfocuses on the pluralist role of story inside and outside organizations, the multiple ways of interpreting stories, and the interplay between the dominant storylines of organizationsand the informal, marginalized and silent stories of its managers, staff, clients and stakeholders.

The anti-managerialist critique has tended to view organizations as entities where small,unified groups of managers pursue their own interests and impose their will on larger groups of powerless workers (e.g. Mumby, 1987).This paradigmis markedly less obvious at the beginning of the 21st Century than it was at the beginning of the 20th Century: at best, it is an incomplete picture of today’s workplace.

More research is needed on other situations of importance to organizational renewal:

  • The role played by narrative in determining which views become the dominant meaning system: “Managers” are rarely a monolithic group and typically comprise a set of factions, with different views, values and goals, some commendable, some less so. More research is needed on the role that narrative plays in determining which views, values and goals become dominant in the contested story space of the organization, and which fall by the wayside, and why.
  • How narratives can enable managers to communicate authentically about organizational renewal: In today’s organization, coercive approaches are typically counter-productive (Beech, 2000).The fates of corporationsand the managers who work there increasingly dependon the narratives that are told about them and the organization by people other than the managers. Even the most powerful CEOs are at risk of losing their jobs if they cannot inspire change (Raines, 2004; Grow et al, 2006; Murray, 2007; Denning 2007).More research is needed on which narratives inspire genuine enthusiasm for authentic organizational renewal, and which don’t, and why.
  • How staff can use narrative to lead horizontally for organizational renewal: More research is needed on the role that narrativeis playingin communications to the emerging configurations of networks, partnerships, clients, investors, analysts and regulators that participate in the organizational story-space, where the speaker has no hierarchical control over the audience (Grey and Garsten, 2001).
  • How staffcan use narrative to lead upwards for organizational renewal:Studies indicate that internally generated renewal is rarely led from the top of an organization: instead, it is usually led by someone in the middle of the organization who champions the change, with the eventual blessing of the top once the activity has developed momentum (Davenport & Prusak, 2003). More research is needed on the role of narrative in winning support from higher management for renewal.

The impact of narrative in organizational renewal

The impact of any organizational narrative can be seen as a function of the nature and number of narratives and behaviors that it generates in the contested story-space of the organization and beyond. The story-space of any organization is of course not empty: it is already populated with a variety of narratives, some consistent, some inconsistent, some dominant, some weak, some suppressed or unspoken.

New narratives entering the organizational story-space that are consistent with the dominant meaning system will tend to reinforce that meaning system.

A narrative that is inconsistent with the dominant meaning system, regardless of who tells it, whether a manager, a staff member, a client, an investor, an analyst, a regulator or change agent, has the potential to alter that meaning system. There are three broad types of possible outcome:

  • The narrative may fail to resonate with its intended audience, and have no effect on the narratives being told, and vanish without a trace.
  • It may achieve a certain degree of notoriety, generate a significant number of anti-narratives and lead to communications and behaviors that are at odds with the initial narrative, and fall into a weak, ineffective or suppressed position in the prevailing meaning system (see figure 1).
  • Or it may achieve prominence among the narratives being told, generate a significant number of stories that are consistent with the initial narrative (in conflict with the dominant story-line) and lead to behaviors that are consistent with the initial narrative, and in due course enter the enduring organizational meaning system (See figure 2).

Figure 1: Figure 2:

Narratives that are effective in generating organizational renewal are those that create a virtuous circle, enabling the organization, its staff and managers and clients to prosper while also generating life-enhancing activity, accompanied by the professional and personal growth of those involved.

The paperbegins from the premise that achieving this virtuous circle of organizational renewal is difficult but inherently valuable and worth pursuing. It is now widely recognized that the standard management practicesof the 20th century rarely achieve this virtuous circle:

  • Interventions by managers with great hierarchical power to impose change typically backfire and achieve the opposite result of what was intended. The imperial style of management doesn’t generate enthusiasm with today’s difficult, skeptical, cynical audiences, and typically leads to a flurry of anti-stories and further disenchantment (Kotter, 1996).What the top sees as needed change, staff and clients tend to see as autocracy (Beech, 2000; Levine et al, 2000).
  • Giving people reasons why they should change is also typically ineffective: research shows that giving people reasons to act differently does not lead to enthusiasm for change in an audience that already has a contrary viewpoint: the confirmation bias typically leads people to reject the source of the reasons, rather than change their viewpoint (Lord et al, 1979; Westen et al 2006; Shermer, 2006; Denning, 2007).

Given the ineffectiveness of these traditional management practices, interest has been growing in the potential of narrative to inspire genuine enthusiasm for organizational renewal. This is in part because narrative inherently concerns the clarification and magnification of being. Once human beings submit to the word-woven magic of narrative, they give themselves over to the increase in existence that it brings (Hirshfield, 1997). It is thus not surprising that there is increasing interest in the contribution that narrative might make to organizational renewal (Stewart, 2007), combined with a concern at the risk of its misuse (Gabriel, 2004).

Two types of narrative

Narrative is heterogeneous. Its variety is staggering, ranging across classically structured stories, anecdotes, accounts, tales, myths, fantasies, sagas, epics, anti-stories, fragmentary stories, stories with no ending, stories with multiple endings, stories with multiple beginnings, stories with endings that circle back to the beginning, comedies, tragedies, detective stories, romances, folk tales, novels, theater, movies, television mini-series, and so on, almost ad infinitum.