The Communications Ethics in Organisational Storytelling & Organisational Narrative Series

Sexy title, ey? The image probably gives a simpler insight.

The assignment for my third year module ‘Values, Issues and Crisis Management Counselling’ moves beyond the tired old essay format, it even pushes the presentation aside to make way for a series of blogs. Putting what we’ve learnt into action. Student as Producer in action.

As I tend to do, I’ve adopted my own take on the question which we’re required to answer by trying to talk about in the context of something I’m involved in away from my course, this time it is the Higher Education sector. On this occasion though I have taken it a step further, I have attempted to bring it together with the themes of another module on the management side of my joint-honours degree.

Over several posts I will explore the concepts of organisational storytelling and organisational narrative as communications tools for organisations to provide a base for exploring the ethical dilemmas faced by PR pros, particularly the challenge of remaining ‘honest’ and ‘fair’.

Here’s a handy round-up of the various posts in this series:

Telling Stories to Achieve Serious Change

What is a story?

What a story looks like: The Heroic Vice-Chancellor versus the Bad Guys

From Management to Public Relations: Storytelling to Narrative

Transforming organisational narrative into organisational storytelling

The 1st Job of PR: Telling the Boss Not to Lie

Is partial disclosure classed as misleading?

To be honest is to not mislead

Please do flick through and read one or two that take your fancy. You might even like to leave a comment or tweet a link out . I will be adding a final post or two informed by the feedback on the first posts so keep checking back.

Is partial disclosure classed as misleading?

“If you are faced with the prospect of publicising something that you know to be untrue, there is little doubt that in the court of public opinion there is no justification for this kind of unethical behaviour. On the other hand, there may be ethical justification for partial disclosure so long as it does not mislead the public or harm anyone.” (Parsons: 2008: p.18)

This is the real debate. The meat on the bones. The juicy stuff.

Three parts of that quote from a CIPR endorsed book stand out for me:

“may be”

“partial disclosure”

“does not mislead”

Each of these are such tenuous, yet significant variables which could be interpreted in a whole variety on their own. Once you bring the three variables into one judgement you are presented with a complex matrix of possible outcomes.

The most critical of the questions that helps to determine the boundaries of the other variables is that of ‘what does it mean to mislead?’

mislead
verb (past and past participle misled /-ˈlɛd/)
[with object]

cause (someone) to have a wrong idea or impression:
the government misled the public about the road’s environmental impact
(Oxford University Press: 2011)

If you reveal only 70% of the truth you are not lying to the public per se but you will leave the audience with a different impression than if you had revealed 100% of the truth, however that impression is not ‘wrong’ as it will accurately correlate with the truth they know.

Nobody will ever know everything about something in my opinion, there will always be new knowledge or truth to be discovered and if we were to look at this dilemma from a philosophical perspective then it could be argued that what is truth to one person may not be truth to another, and what is regarded as the truth may be challenged and change over time.

Therefore if to be honest is not to mislead, could there indeed be room for partial disclosure of the truth within the boundaries of the ethical practice of public relations as suggested by Parsons in the opening of this post?

I say yes. It is matter of individual judgement and conscience within that matrix of variables.

What do you think?

• Oxford University Press. (2012). Definition for mislead: Oxford Dictionaries Online (World English). [Online] Available from: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mislead?q=mislead [Accessed: 12^th December 2011]
• Parsons, P. (2008) Ethics in Public Relations: A Guide to Best Practice. 2^nd Ed. London: Kogan Page.

The 1st Job of PR: Telling the Boss Not to Lie

(Warning: this post ends with a Malcolm Tucker quote which may cause offence)

The public relations industry has a poor reputation (ironically) for putting a ‘spin’ on things and being bias towards its clients and employers – not ‘biting the hand that feeds it’ you could say. There are different grades of presenting information (or spinning it) which range from omitting particular parts of the truth through to telling a lie – there are various shades of grey between black and white – and they are judged on how accurately the audience is informed.

Of course being truthful and honest about every event affecting an organisation is a nice notion however the information that it presents will have a direct impact on its reputation and as the CIPR’s Code of Conduct opens by saying: “Reputation has a direct and major impact on the corporate well-being of every organisation, be it a multinational, a charity, a Government Department or a small business” (2010) so suddenly ‘complete honesty’ in the face of a telling a damaging account of events may be ideologically appealing however practically it is less desirable for senior managers.

The role of a public relations / communications professional is therefore to uphold the reputation of the organisation but also to counsel management on maintaining honesty and truth within the messages disseminated – a sometimes unenviable balancing act.

I am clear in my own mind that telling a lie and overtly misleading somebody on behalf of an organisation is unacceptable given the ethical implications but also, and this is perhaps the more useful argument in counselling others, because in today’s society with the modern investigative media and whistleblowers the truth will at some point come out and it will be clear for all to see that the organisation told a lie (and who is to say the organisation will protect the communicator rather than put them in the firing line as a human shield).

Given that the role of PR is to uphold a good reputation for the client / employer, it should be recognised that this is a long-term mission that should not be compromised by short-term actions that make the next few weeks an easy ride. Similarly, good practice of public relations is to control the message and that is much easier to achieve if you are the source of the detail and facts rather than, for instance, the media who might not present the whole picture or a rival organisation that will present it in the most damaging way at the most damaging time as summed up by the fictional No. 10 Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker, in the TV Series The Thick of It: (Apologies in advance if you are easily offended).

Tucker’s Law “If some cunt can fuck something up, that cunt will pick the worst possible time to fucking fuck it up cause that cunt’s a cunt.” (2007) (See it on You Tube)

The Thick of It, Spinners and Losers. (2007). [TV Broadcast] BBC Four, 3^rd July. 21.00 hrs.

This is part of a series of blog posts on communications ethics in organisational storytelling and organisational narrative for a final year project. Normal HE-geekery service will resume soon.

Transforming organisational narrative into organisational storytelling

If we look at [organisational] ‘narrative’ back in the management studies context we begin to unpick where the similarities to storytelling end. Czarniawska identifies that specifically, a narrative is a spoken or written text giving a chronologically connected account of an event or series of events (2004) which correlates with Judy Gombita’s reference’s to a giant tapestry in my previous post.

Barthes helps to illustrate how narrative is something that exists more naturally that the constructed stories we have talked about previously. ‘Among the vehicles of narrative are articulated language, whether oral or written, pictures, still or moving, gestures, and an ordered mixture of all those substances’ narrative is present in myth, legend, fables, tales, short stories, epics, history, tragedy, drame [suspense drama], comedy, pantomime, paintings (in Santa Ursula by Carpaccio, for instance), stain-glass windows, movies, local news, conversation. Moreover, in the infinite variety of forms, it is present at all times, in all places, in all societies, indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative; all classes, all human groups, have their stories, and very often those stories are enjoyed by men of difference and even opposite cultural backgrounds: narrative remains largely unconcerned with good or bad literature. Like life itself, it is there, international, trans-historical, trans-cultural.’ (1975)

Ultimately, what makes a narrative different from a story though is that a narrative may not necessarily contain a plot and it may not have a beginning, middle or – particularly – an end. Think about Judy’s tapestry and how it is continuously being wove.

Adding a plot to a narrative makes it a story which can be done through adding structure, metaphors, irony or many other things. A plot is recognised by Todorov as a passage from one state of equilibrium to another (1977), for instance: an organisation (in equilibrium) may embark on changing their operations to respond to new legislation and become bankrupt in the process (equilibrium reinstated) or they might flourish and grow as a result (alternative equilibrium). Adding a plot transforms a narrative into a story.

I am of the opinion that adding a plot is where the communications professional becomes a key player in the storytelling process. Managers will look to communicators to turn what might be a mundane, less powerful narrative into a story that will captivate its audience and provoke them to think or act in a particular way; and this is where the ethical dilemmas begin.

• Barthes, R.  (1975). An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative in New Literary: On Narrative and Narratives History. Vol. 6, No. 2 (Winter). pp. 237-272 [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/468419 [Accessed 12th December 2011]. 
• Czarniawska, B. (2004) Narratives in Social Science Research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Todorov, T. (1977). The poetics of prose. Ithaca: NY Cornell University Press.

From Management to Public Relations: Storytelling to Narrative

I have talked so far about storytelling within a management role but it of course a communications / public relations function and the ethical considerations highlighted come from the field of communications ethics. I would like to highlight a developing notion within the field of communications that aligns well with organisational storytelling in management studies.

‘Organisational narrative’ is a term I stumbled across when browsing the PR Conversations blog in a post by Judy Gombita which aims to provide a new descriptor for the role of public relations professionals that moves away from ‘spin’. What particularly caught my eye was that this blog post begins by evaluating the option of saying that PR people ‘tell stories’ which is what I have been discussing so far.

Judy goes on to say that descriptor has two inherent problems:

1. In the English vernacular at least, “telling stories” can have the child-like connotation that one is telling lies…or spinning the tale. Not very helpful in overcoming our number-one stereotype.
2. Public relations is not the only profession that lays claim to “telling stories.” If you ask a journalist what he or she does, likely they will say they tell stories. Same with documentary film makers. Internal communications often say they are corporate storytellers. Marketers look to champion consumers…to tell their companies’ stories. Do you see the problem? The term has a lot of competition. It’s almost over-used.

And then begins to offer definitions of organisational narrative, including: ‘sharing anecdotes about the company and its relevant stakeholders, whenever and wherever it appears the organizational narrative is appropriate and the audience judged receptive’ which begins to sound similar to storytelling.

The ultimate definition offered by Judy is as follows:

“Think of the organizational narrative as being like a giant tapestry that is continuously being woven, viewed and commented upon by various stakeholders. The organizational narrative comprises areas such as the history of the organization, research and development, unique selling proposition, business goals, company values, successes (including failures overcome), key players, and relationships within the company, sector and larger community.”

As before, the ethical considerations of truth and honesty are still very much relevant and have a significant impact on the message of the narrative and how an audience understands the organisations. A communicator may be under pressure to tell anecdotes of an organisation’s history in a way that omits or alters some of the less complimentary elements.

This is part of a series of blog posts on communications ethics in organisational storytelling and organisational narrative for a final year project. Normal HE-geekery service will resume soon.

What a story looks like: The Heroic Vice-Chancellor versus the Bad Guys

I’m aware that the established audience for my blog is largely made up of those with an interest in Higher Education, so I hope that a relevant example will help to illustrate how a story could be told within an organisation.

A Vice-Chancellor is giving an all staff presentation and is talking about the challenges faced by the university; they begin to talk about the Research Excellence Framework (REF). They explain that the REF will judge the quality of the university’s research and will determine how much funding is receiving in the following years. They go on to remind staff that an increase in research income is crucial for the university and illustrate the consequences of a poor result, along with contingency plans for balancing the books elsewhere. During the talk on the REF, context will be given about the villains (the government) and the brave and bold heroes (university senior managers) who will steer the ship through the storm and keep it steady through careful planning and avoiding rocky obstacles. The story may make some people out to be particular types of characters, but most of the details are there and the audience is clear on the various outcomes.

Now, imagine if the story told were more like this:

A Vice-Chancellor is giving an all staff presentation and is talking about the challenges faced by the university; they begin to talk about the Research Excellence Framework (REF). They explain that the REF will judge the quality of the university’s research and will determine how much funding is receiving in the following years. They go on to remind staff that an increase in research income is crucial for the university and illustrate the consequences of a poor result. During the talk on the REF, context will be given about the villains (the government) and the brave and bold heroes (university senior managers) who will steer the ship through the storm and keep it steady through careful planning and avoiding rocky obstacles. The story may make some people out to be particular types of characters, and some of the details are there; the audience is not clear on the various outcomes.

Finally, imagine the following story:

A Vice-Chancellor is giving an all staff presentation and is talking about the challenges faced by the university; they begin to talk about the Research Excellence Framework (REF). They explain that the REF will judge the quality of the university’s research and will determine how much funding is receiving in the following years. They go on to remind staff that an increase in research income is crucial for the university and make it clear that the result is an ‘all or nothing’ situation. During the talk on the REF, context will be given about the villains (the government) and the brave and bold heroes (university senior managers) who will steer the ship through the storm and keep it steady through careful planning and avoiding rocky obstacles. The story may make some people out to be particular types of characters – so the audience know who the good guys and the bad guys are – but the audience are left to determine what ‘nothing’ means for the university in an all or nothing situation.

You may think that there is not a great deal of difference between the stories on the surface, but in fact there are some important differences in how the stories are told. In story 1 all of the details are provided, the teller is honest with the audience. In story 2 some details are omitted so that the audience has some understanding of the situation but the teller leaves certain gaps to be filled in. Story 3 takes it further, it does not provide details on what the future will look like and leaves the audience to imagine what failure looks like for themselves.

This shows what omitting certain details can do to a story and hopefully illustrates the varying levels of control organisations can have over the understanding of their employees. It also starts to bring the question of honesty to the fore.

I’m interested in examples of stories that might have left out some details or any stories you have been told which are told to help you make sense of change. Please do contact me via the comments box or check out the ‘get in touch’ page.

This is part of a series of blog posts on communications ethics in organisational storytelling and organisational narrative for a final year project. Normal HE-geekery service will resume soon.

What is a story?

Cast your mind back to those English lessons where the focus was on creative writing and the outcome, your grade in this case, was dependent upon the quality and conceivability of the plot and how you conveyed it to the reader. Fast-forward several years and I’m considering the same simplistic attributes of a story, just in a very particular context.

There are a handful of academics that have really developed the notion of using stories to help make sense of situations in organisations; they make a number of points about the components, causes and consequences of storytelling. I wanted to highlight a few to help underline the significance of stories and to move us away from any notion that they are merely something children are told (see post 3) and to reiterate that stories should not just evoke thoughts of fiction, they can be accounts of actual happenings.

Boje is significant in this field, he makes many arguments (1991), including:

• > Even in stable times, the ‘story’ is highly variable and at times political, in that part of the collective processing involves telling different versions of the stories to different audiences.
• > An important aspect of performance in real organisations may be to strategically omit or include details about characters, contextual cues, and plot elements. [similarly...]
• > It is often preferable to omit purposefully contextual cues and to allow for multiple interpretations on the part of the receivers.
• > Storytelling can be a useful tool for managers trying to cope with rapid change. Training managers to be storytellers may thus result in training them to be more effective in organisations.

These arguments highlight how volatile storytelling could be if it were not effectively executed, particularly if significant contextual details were omitted and the audience were to become aware of the omission.

But why am I talking about this in a communications ethics context?

Well, in my opinion storytelling provides managers with a tool through internal communications functions to put into practice the argument that sees ‘change as a process of developing myths, metaphors, rituals and ceremonies to cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity that planning and control measures cannot cover’ (Oliver, 2010) and because I am adamant that much of manager’s role is as a communicator. Similarly, Boje argues that training managers to be storytellers may thus result in training them to be more effective in organisations (1991).

That briefly illustrates the relevance to communications; I will address the link to ethics in later posts (with the help of your thoughts through comments on these posts).

Boje, D. (1991). The Storytelling Organization: A Study of Story Performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36 (1), p.106 [online]. Available from: ABI/INFORM Global at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=147302&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=57096&RQT=309&VName=PQD [Accessed 12^th December 2012].

This is part of a series of blog posts on communications ethics in organisational storytelling and organisational narrative for a final year project. Normal HE-geekery service will resume soon.

DEBATE: Should we pay Course Reps?

After NUS’ Course Rep Conference on Wednesday 7th December 2011 (#repconf11) many of us were left pondering the final question of the closing debate which I chaired. It is always a contentious question but we have still not grappled with it fully. Should we pay course reps?

This is of course a local decision that each Students’ Union will address individually but I would like to help give a proper flavour of the arguments, with your help.

In the run up to ending the year and taking a well-earned rest as a sector, I am inviting a number of people to post their thoughts on this dilemma on my blog to help provoke your own thoughts.

I would like to invite each and every course rep, students’ union officer / staff, higher education sector person, quality geek, student, academic, vice-chancellor etc to both comment on this blog post with your thoughts and crucially to vote in the poll on the right hand side of this website or at the bottom of this post.

I’m pleased to say that first up is one of the panellists from Course Rep Conference, Lee Fallin, who is kicking us off with the argument against paying reps. This is Lee’s personal opinion that he has kindly provided us with and does not necessarily represent the opinion of any organisation he is related to or employed by.

Lee Fallin | @leefallin | Education & Representation Coordinator, Hull University Union:

“I am going to start off by making my personal opinion clear – I do not believe Course Representatives should be paid. The heart of many representation systems is the very fact that Course Representatives are passionate volunteers who are elected by their peers. This passion drives so many of our Representatives to make a real difference for the good of students. The very ethos of this would be at risk were they just chasing financial incentives. Not only that, but because of the striking differences between departments, would it be fair to pay all representatives equally? If we did, would this drive some Course Representatives to find problems where there are none just for the sake of chasing the cheque?

Some people argue we should pay them due to some of the tasks they need to do. However, if we are getting our Representatives to do administration this is wrong. They are elected to represent and as Unions we should support them to do this by doing the chasing and administration ourselves. Course Representatives should never be given so much work that they need to be paid. This leaves them free to engage with students on their course. Naturally, if they are a high-level Representative and need to do administration or we are asking them to do something that is worthy of a job such as act as a Panel Member for a Periodic Review then they should be paid.

I am not saying we should not incentivise our Representatives. They do fantastic work and we need to reward that in any way we can. Giving them hoodies, free entry to club nights, putting on socials, providing refreshments for meetings, recognising their achievements, giving them awards and providing our Course Representatives with certificates are just some of the ways we can do this. They are also partaking in a valuable volunteering experience for their C.V. and their own personal development. Paying them turns them into no more than customer service assistants. That is not representation. It is something worse. It really is solidifying students as consumers, not partners in their education. Worse still, this is under the guise of representation – annexing any rights they would have as a consumer.”

———————————————————

Update: I’ll add links here to newer posts in this debate as they are put on-line:

Jo Caulfield | @jocaulfield | President, Bangor University Students’ Union
Being a Course Rep isn’t a job, it’s a calling

Sophie Richardson | @Sophie_Richie | President, Queen Mary Students’ Union & NUS NEC
What about those Course Reps not in the room?

Martin Hughes | @universityboy | Founder and blogger at http://theuniversityblog.co.uk/
Course Reps and Reasonable Recognition

Emily Collins | @emmielouli | Student Engagement Coordinator, Reading University Students’ Union
Reward those striving to improve their academic environment by better equipping them to learn

Will Osborn | @willosborn | Student & Trustee, Bangor Students’ Union
Paying Course Reps just isn’t feasible

Remember to comment and vote with your thoughts!

For more insightful thoughts on the world of higher education from a self-proclaimed #qualitygeek – follow @danderricott on Twitter

Telling Stories to Achieve Serious Change

Rumour and speculation capture the attention of the public in the UK on a regular basis with tabloid press often providing the context of situations distant to the reader. The honesty and fairness displayed by journalists and editors will have a considerable impact on how accurately the reader makes sense of the situation.

This can be transferred to an organisation’s internal environment with managers adopting the role of the editor and employees becoming their public. Storytelling within an organisation allows them [employees] to supplement individual memories with institutional memory (Boje, 1991). In reality this means that when an employee is faced with uncertainty, such as in times of change, they can make sense of the situation or the change based on an interpretation provided by the organisation rather than through their own interpretation.

Academics are developing this as the concept of ‘organisational storytelling’ which has provided the argument from Boje (1991) that organisations are collective storytelling systems. Ultimately the stories are shared and embedded to ensure that the audience, usually subordinates in the organisational hierarchy, understand situations and responds to them in a manner which helps to achieve the objectives of the organisation. Employees in effect become characters themselves in a plot which is written and directed by their superiors.

Organisational storytelling is a tool within the communicator’s toolbox that can be a particularly helpful safeguard in achieving organisational change when planning and control measures do not suffice, creating times of ambiguity and uncertainty where individuals are left to make sense of a situation themselves. A story, if believed, provides reference points which inform their response and affect whether it is positive or not for the organisation.

I want to spend some time, with your input, exploring how ethical considerations are addressed by managers and communicators in the process of storytelling; in particular honesty and fairness are the notions that I would like to focus on. With reference to my earlier point, the honesty and fairness displayed by the storyteller will impact upon the accuracy of how the audience makes sense of a situation.

Over a handful of posts, I hope I will be able to illustrate some of the current thinking around organisational storytelling before presenting the various pressures which influence how honest and fair a storyteller is, including rumour and speculation in their various guises. Weaved throughout the posts will be my developing opinion on how critical honesty and fairness are in the successful telling of stories and how that impacts on the successful practice of public relations using this tool.

Whether you are a manager, a leader, a communications professional or none of those – I hope that you will find this debate engaging and that you will indeed engage through the comments facility below. Your comments on the first few posts will help to inform some of the later posts.

Boje, D. (1991) The Storytelling Organization: A Study of Story Performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36 (1), p.106 [online]. Available from: ABI/INFORM Global at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=147302&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=57096&RQT=309&VName=PQD [Accessed 12^th December 2012].

This is part of a series of blog posts on communications ethics in organisational storytelling and organisational narrative for a final year project. Normal HE-geekery service will resume soon.

What’s your story of students’ unions and the student movement?

In organisations we can use stories to help make sense of situations, particularly of new phenomena or of change. Think about the story of the corner shop which has always been a family business and is now run by the 5^th generation Mr Jones & his wife. There is a great deal of history within the business and many stories to tell to new employees about how tradition dictates that certain things are done in a certain way. Within these stories there could be villains that once tried to throw everybody of course and ruin the business, but they were defeated by the heroic character of Mr Jones the 3^rd back in 1957.

Similarly if you think of some more well-known organisations, Steve Jobs is very much portrayed as a ‘hero’ within the Apple story, or maybe L’Oréal are seen in a particularly heroic or villainous manner after buying The Body Shop – different people will tell different stories.

For an assignment I am working on at the moment I want to explore some organisational stories within the student movement – however little or large, developed or undeveloped.

It could be a story from within your Union about the reasons behind a fundamental restructuring of staff, or the reasons for having strict election regulations after ‘that unforgettable time when…’ – these are stories that are told to people who are new to an organisation to help them make sense of the situation.

Similarly, I’m interested in stories that are constructed about the student movement. Perhaps Liam Burns was characterised during your handover as the brave hero who rescued the student movement from the clutches of the centrist student politicians, or maybe you imagined him to actually be a pesky troublemaker? I’m suggesting neither, but hopefully you get the point that the past can be conveyed in ways similar to fairy tales when you’re young.

Have a think about how situations were explained to you to help you make sense of them. If you have something then please do let me know! Drop it in a comment below or email me (dderricott@lincoln.ac.uk) and let me know the ‘plot’ and the ‘characters’. Don’t worry about it sounding odd!