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.