Shaping the story: rhetoric, persuasion and creative writing in organisational ethnography

Abstract

Every writer is engaged in processes of persuasion, not only in their communicating with the reader but in the very processes of thinking out their ideas. Rhetoric is inevitably an integral part of research work and research writing. All social science writing involves the creation of an artful product. This proposition is examined with reference to the author's own writing about his ethnographic research on management and key parallels are observed between the techniques of creating an ethnographic account and the rhetorical style of the creative fiction writer. The basic issues of the paper are raised in the story of a dialogue between the researcher and Tom Beeston.