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.