Narratives as Sources of Stability and Change in Organizations: Approaches and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

Although narrative analysis has made significant advances in organization and management studies, scholars have not yet unleashed its full potential. This review provides an understanding of key issues in organizational narrative analysis with a focus on the role of narratives in organizational stability and change. We start by elaborating on the characteristics of organizational narratives to provide a conceptual framework for organizational narrative analysis. We elaborate on three key approaches to narrative analysis on stability and change: realist, interpretative, and poststructuralist. We then review several topic areas where narrative analysis has so far offered the most promise: organizational change, identity, strategy, entrepreneurship, and personal change. Finally, we identify important issues that warrant attention in future research, both theoretically and methodologically.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Matthew Cronin and Laurie Weingart for the insightful comments and guidance throughout this process. We also wish to thank our colleagues at Aalto University School of Business, at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University and at New Mexico State University as well as the many other scholars with whom we have been in touch for their help and suggestions that have greatly improved the paper. In particular, we want to acknowledge the help and comments of Charlotta Björk, Natalia Korchagina, Pikka-Maaria Laine, Anniina Rantakari, Stefanie Reissner, and Paul Savage in putting it all together. We also want to express our gratitude to Grace Ann Rosile and 25 years of storytelling work done at the Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry (ScMoi http://scmoi.org).