A Narrative Approach To Organization Studies

Annotation With a focus on organization studies, this volume takes readers through the narrative approach to qualitative research, from setting up the fieldwork to writing up the research.

`The book is a unique and excellent introduction to postmodern narrative analyses' - Organization Studies `[This book] should succeed in putting the metaphorical cat amongst just about every metaphorical pigeon that might imaginably take flight within the organization and communication research arenas. Story time will never be the same again, nor will interpretative research' - Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney `Timely and first rate. It nicely stretches a reader's thinking about the topic' - Thomas Lee, University of Washington, School of Business `David Boje is a pioneering theorist in organization studies and management... [His book] is yet another example of Boje's pioneering spirit and concern for exactitude. [His] scholarly account of narrative and antenarrative methods is both corrective and exploratory of how stories must be understood in terms of their own internal dynamics, and not viewed as static entities. Boje's book is a magnificent start... A book that breaks new ground in organizational analysis, this is a must-read for researchers and practitioners in the fields of organization and management studies' - Adrian Carr, University of Western Sydney `Boje masterfully shows how to analyze texts and ideas before they are reduced and fitted into the dominant ideological frameworks of the day. [He] provides a powerful tool for achieving greater democracy in how we approach doing social science... [and] liberates our capacity to make meanings for ourselves' - Paul Hirsch, Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management `This is an important book. It is a major methodological contribution to critical, postmodern studies of organizations and management. It is essential reading for critical management scholars' - Robert P. Gephart, Jr., University of Alberta School of Business `David Boje has emerged as the leading postmodern thinker in management theory and organization science. His prolific output lights the path for others to follow in a field awakening to the challenge of postmodern critical theory. Updating and revising narrative theory for the prevailing "postmodern condition," Boje masterfully reconstructs the concepts and methods of storytelling, as he subverts the dominant principles of modernist organization theory. He offers a subtle and complex notion of narrative... This impressive book should leave an indelible mark on management and organization studies' - Steven Best, University of Texas, El Paso An essential guide for academics and researchers needing to look at alternative discourse analysis strategies. As a research tool, narrative methods have become increasingly useful in organization studies, where much research involves the interpretation of 'stories' in some form. This methodology can be applied where qualitative story analyses can help to assess interview, newspaper or web document stories for research projects. In this book, Boje sets out eight analysis options that can deal with storytelling, recognizing that stories in organizations can be self-destructing, flowing, networking and not at all static. In so doing, he shows ways in which narrative methods can be supplemented by 'antenarrative' methods, where fragmented and collective storytelling can be interpreted. A valuable resource that will be widely used in organizational or communications research, for graduate level qualitative methods seminars and by researchers wanting to do story analysis. David Boje is Professor at the New Mexico State University. He is also on the editorial board of the journal Organization.

Topics covered by this title include: structuralist approaches to narrative analysis; poststructural approaches to narrative; genre analysis; and narrating ourselves.

The SAGE Handbook of Process Organization Studies offers a compendium of perspectives on process thinking, process organizational theory, process research methodology and empirical applications.

Many streams of research in organization and management have criticized the mainstream view of organizations as decision-making and information-processing structures, controlled through rational representations (substantive or procedural rationality). In spite of their differences, these streams of research share some key theoretical principles: Their processual view of organizing as 'becoming', their emphasis on the key role of action and action meaning; their interest in the agential power of artefacts and objects; the exploratory and inquiring nature of organizing. This book argues that Pragmatist thought can contribute to those approaches offering some theoretical argument, both as a general intellectual orientation and as a conceptual toolbox. As a general attitude, Pragmatism develops a radical critique of all the dualisms which often hinder organization studies: Thought and action, design and utilization, decision and execution, reality and representation, to name a few. As a conceptual toolbox, Pragmatism can contribute and clarify key concepts for organization and management studies, such as inquiry, semiotic mediation, habit, abduction, trans-action, and valuation. However, Pragmatist thought is still little known by organization and management scholars and by reflexive managers. The proposed book aims at making pragmatist key notions accessible to them and applicable to theorize organizations and transform managerial practices.

Exploring an emerging area of interest, this book brings together indigenous studies and organization and management research to discuss the complexities of researching indigenous organizations and forms of organizing. Covering various intersections between indigenous peoples, communities, organizations and business enterprises, the author outlines the parameters for researching with an indigenous purpose. A valuable and thought-provoking read for researchers of management, organization, and HRM, Indigenous Organization Studies is a useful methodological tool for undertaking research.

SAGE has unparalleled depth in journal back lists in the field of organization studies, and publishes several of the top journals in the field, including Organization, Human Relations and Organization Studies. This four-volume set brings together over sixty of the key papers published in SAGE books and journals since the turn of the millennium, many of which are not easily available in traditional library holdings. Professor Stewart Clegg is widely recognised as a preeminent scholar of organization studies, and together with an international editorial board of ten renowned scholars in the field, has arranged this selection to help the reader better understand the developments in the field from different perspectives. Emphasis is placed on the ′history of the present′ of organization studies, with articles that discuss contemporary issues and foreshadow further developments in the field, across popular theoretical perspectives such as discourse analysis, institutional theory and complexity theory.

Carl Rhodes examines the implicit power of writing and authorship that is at play when people and organisations are (re)presented in research. To explore this, the book reports a research project in the area of organisational storytelling that investigates how people in one organisation used stories to (re)present their own learning experiences from the implementation of a quality management program. This research is written in three principal genres: autobiography, ethnography and a fictional short story. These (re)presentational strategies are reviewed to examine how different genres effect authority in different ways. Drawing extensively on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on writers associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism, the book offers a challenging discussion of what organisational research might be when the notion of the equivalence of reality and representation is radically questioned.