Special issue on Storytelling: whose change?

Citation

(2007), "Special issue on Storytelling: whose change?", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2007.02320caa.002

Special issue on Storytelling: whose change?

Co-editors for this special issue: Sajev Dugal (University of Rhode Island), Matthew Eriksen (University of Florida, Tampa), Robert van Boeschoten & Hugo Letiche, University for Humanistics, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Issue 5 (or 6); manuscripts due 1 May 2008

Please direct submissions to Robert van Boeschoten on rvb@uvh.nl by 31 May 2007

Storytelling is being trumpeted as a way of generating group and/or organizational self-identity and understanding. This special number focuses on the (im-)possibilities of storytelling as practitioner self-discovery through self-ethnography (Alvesson, 2003). Are practitioners by narrating their own work to one another able to discover their own identity-in-practice and contrast it to officially-correct-stories (Abma, 2003)? What is told via self-exploration is often different from what should-be-told; can the stories of lived-practice serve in organization as inspiration for purposeful, committed and effective action?

Stories supposedly draw tellers and listeners alike into webs of rich associations and connections. Stories act as containers for awareness, change and transformation. But ''stories'' come in all sorts of forms: from the boss's forceful persuasion to the sharing of experiences of disobedience. Stories may be constructed from personal anecdotes, conceptual metaphors, practical analogies, tragic as well as comic tales, etcetera. Stories perhaps require plot, rich description, character development, or whatever. In this special number we are not so much interested in what the different types of stories do or do not have to contain. Nor is our focus storytelling as a managerial tool rotating around the effective influencing of others. Self-narration of practice as an organizational learning tool is the focus. Developing and sharing narrations of work is to be explored as a powerful tool of self-awareness and organizational practice. Linked to this is a manifold of issues. The ground for the research to be explored focuses on narrative used to build up identity in relation to work, colleagues, organization and change. The narrative methodology of self-ethnography is the starting point for exploring (non-) change initiated by exploring professional identity in-practice.

Even if self-ethnography produces rich ''stories'' valued by practitioners and replete with potential, will these ''stories'' be accepted and esteemed by the organization? Or do systems of narrative inevitably just produce illusions of control, defining inside versus outside, probable versus improbable, structure versus chaos. Is organization inevitably narratively constructed as ordered, rational and purposive with the ''other'' represented as unstructured, goal-less and chaotic (Czarniawska, 1997). Oppositions will be retained; systems of opposition will triumph; stories of practice will be repressed.

Can storytelling's promise, that the recognition by (the group of) individuals via reflection on own practice will produce narratives with significant change value, be maintained? Who ''gains'' in storytelling? Can self-ethnography achieve ''work-place learning'' wherein self and circumstance are brought narratively closer together? Or does storytelling just serve for all the more managerialism?

Questions about this special issue, including expectations, requirements, appropriateness of topic and the like, can be directed to Robert van Boeschoten at: rvb@uvh.nl

Submission guidelines: information for contributors to JOCM can be obtained from www.emeraldinsight.com/jocm.htm

Submissions must adhere to the requirements for authors of JOCM. All submissions will be subject to double blind review per the journal review policy.

Keywords: Self-ethnography, Professional development, Storytelling, Case-studies, Narrative learning