Making Sense Of Work Through Collaborative Storytelling

Collective sense making starts with individual stories. Stories influence how we construct our sense of self in relation to others and our social environment, especially within the world of work. The stories we tell ourselves at work, particularly during times of change, impact our relationships and the collaboration with those who are engaged in the same work activities. Stories that we take for granted as "common sense" may not resonate with others, leading to conflict and tensions. This book focuses on the development of collaborative practices at work, and in organisations, through Collaborative Storytelling: from sharing stories to exchanging experiences and building a common narrative collectively. This open access book will be of interest to practitioners and academics working in the fields of adult education, equity and inclusion, human resource management, practice-based studies, organisational studies, qualitative research methods, sensemaking, storytelling, and workplace identity.

Collective sense making starts with individual stories. Stories influence how we construct our sense of self in relation to others and our social environment, especially within the world of work The stories we tell ourselves at work, particularly during times of change, impact our relationships and the collaboration with those who are engaged in the same work activities. Stories that we take for granted as 'commonsense' may not resonate with others, leading to conflict and tensions. This book focuses on the development of collaborative practices at work, and in organisations, through stories: from sharing stories to exchanging experiences and building a common narrative collectively. This open access book will be of interest to academics working in the fields of organisational studies, qualitative research methods, and workplace identity. .

This set of multi-reference works is meant to be read together as the five volumes interlace one another like the laces of a shoe in the famous painting by Vincent van Gogh. Who will wear the shoes is a question long debated in art history and philosophy. If we take these five volumes from different points of view on the theory and practice of business storytelling then we have a crisscrossing, a new and impressive dialogue for the reader. This set is presented as a new way to lace up the laces of business storytelling.Volume 1 aims to recount narratives in a variety of ways so that the precepts of entrepreneurial storytelling can be made accessible to a variety of audiences — academic, practitioner, student, and community member. Entrepreneurship has a long history and tradition but there are disputed ways of doing business storytelling in entrepreneurship that the next four volumes articulate.Volume 2 provides insights into stories fostering the idea of business (and not necessarily business itself). It focuses specifically on history — contributing to the current debates within management and organizational history around the idea of 'the historic turn'. It reflects on the idea of business and beyond; could there be more to history and business storytelling than what has previously been accepted in the field? This book sets out to explore a diverse array of alternative modes and multiple ways of storying organizations. The editors intentionally sought to involve an international network of authors with diverse storytelling accounts of history as a way of helping build out this new storytelling paradigm in a diverse and inclusive ethic. As a result, this volume showcases a broad spectrum of critical storytelling from geographically diverse authors working in universities, small businesses, and public service throughout Brazil, Canada, Finland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To reflect these dynamics, and for the stories in this volume to fit together, chapters were organized into three themes: stories of processing history, tales of history-as-method, and narratives of history through a business opportunity.Volume 3 features stories that reflect the exacerbated inequalities of race, gender, and income across the world. These inequalities and power relations remain continuously con-tested, particularly in these trying times, despite being captive to a particular economic ideology built on the premise of exploitation and subjugation. The stories told in this volume tell against the orthodoxy, the colonizer, and the (seemingly) powerful. They are organized as stories of resistance, emancipation, and transformation. They invite us to rethink the multiple ways to (re)structure power relations between the colonizer and the colonized, and open up spaces for the marginalized underprivileged voices.Volume 4 is designed to create a new business storytelling paradigm that critically approaches business narratives that have historically privileged a corporate agenda. It explores the various ways that images of the other in business are developed, presented, and accounted for through powerful and dominant narratives. The stories in this volume, collectively, help readers to understand, resist, and provide strategies for change through various analyses of how business narratives come to develop, get written, are legitimized, are challenged, and get changed over time.Volume 5 brings together the practices specific to the socioeconomic approach to management (SEAM). SEAM is a method of change management developed through research interventions carried out in more than 2,000 companies and organizations since 1975. This method is systemic, it considers the whole company, and tends to simultaneously increase social and economic performance by focusing mainly on the development of human skills and behaviors, making it possible to reduce dysfunctions and recycle hidden costs into added value.

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

Collaboration is key for organizations in the 21st century, yet few business people have been trained to teach this skill. How do you advance ideas in a collaborative way and then communicate them throughout your company? In this practical book, author Gretchen Anderson shows you how to generate ideas with others while gaining buy-in from all levels of your organization. Product managers, designers, marketers, technical leaders, and executives will obtain better insight into how team members work together to make decisions. Through tangible exercises and techniques, you’ll learn how to turn promising ideas into products, services, and solutions that make a real difference in the market. Use a framework to develop ideas into hypotheses to be tested and refined Avoid common pitfalls in the collaboration process Align communication approaches to ensure that collaboration is effective and inclusive Structure events or meetings for different types of collaboration depending on the people involved Practice giving and receiving critiques to foster inclusion without resorting to consensus-based decisions

Entre-employees are those who work for an organization while running their own company, with no interest in the transition to full-time entrepreneurship. This book explores the history, challenges, and leadership development of women entre-employees. The author examines the impact of COVID as well as race and sexism in the workplace on women entre-employees. She also discusses how women are more likely to embrace community-driven businesses, which often face slow growth. Given these challenges, the author proposes ways that employers can support women entre-employees, who have been proven to be valuable workers. Using the life stories of women entre-employees, this useful addition to the entrepreneurship field will appeal to entrepreneurship scholars as well as those interested in topics related to leadership and gender at work.

Stories and storytelling are one of the primary ways that families and family members make sense of both everyday and difficult events, create a sense of individual and group identity, remember, connect generations, and establish guidelines for family behavior. With so many important functions, storytelling is a significant but still understudied communicative process for the family. Family Storytelling focuses on the ways in which stories are told in and about family in order to provide insight into the processes, functions, and consequences of family storytelling. This collection of empirical articles illuminates various ways in which family storytelling affects and reflects the negotiation of individual and relational identity in the family, teaches important family lessons, and helps members make sense of and cope with difficulty. Each of these functions is explored through both scientific and interpretive investigations, thus showcasing the contributions that research on family storytelling from different paradigms make to our understanding of the family. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Family Communication.

Inclusive Leadership speaks to the human side of organization and communities. Both practitioners and academics provide insights that broaden our traditional view of diversity issues into a perspective focused on better understanding the theory and practice of inclusive leadership.