The Aesthetics of Management Storytelling

An aesthetics perspective on storytelling contributes to an understanding of how and why some stories are more effective than others. Three ideas about the nature of aesthetic experience—that it is (1) felt meaning from abductive reasoning, (2) characterized by feelings of connectedness, and (3) enjoyed for its own sake-supply criteria for identifying story quality and suggest how to make stories more effective. This idea of good and bad stories informs every aspect of management storytelling, which we illustrate by reviewing the functions of management storytelling using Mintzberg's taxonomy of the roles of the manager Furthermore, through Mintzberg's taxonomy, we show the contributions of aesthetically strong management stories to organizational learning.

[1]  Alan L. Wilkins The creation of company cultures: The role of stories and human resource systems , 1984 .

[2]  Sarah J. Tracy Becoming a Character for Commerce , 2000 .

[3]  Mary E. Boyce Collective Centring and Collective Sense-making in the Stories and Storytelling of One Organization , 1995 .

[4]  D. Barry Telling changes: from narrative family therapy to organizational change and development , 1997 .

[5]  Yiannis Gabriel,et al.  Turning Facts into Stories and Stories into Facts: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Organizational Folklore , 1991 .

[6]  D. Boje The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. , 1991 .

[7]  Alan L. Wilkins,et al.  On Getting the Story Crooked (and Straight) , 1991 .

[8]  M. Bowles,et al.  Myth, Meaning and Work Organization , 1989 .

[9]  Larry D. Browning Organisational Narratives and Organisational Structure , 1991 .

[10]  Robert P. Gephart,et al.  Succession Sensemaking and Organizational Change: A Story of a Deviant College President , 1991 .

[11]  Antonio Strati Organizations Viewed through the Lens of Aesthetics , 1996 .

[12]  G. Huber Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures , 1991 .

[13]  Donald B. Fedor,et al.  Myth Making: A Qualitative Step in OD Interventions , 1982 .

[14]  Eliat Aram,et al.  Educating Prospective Managers in the Complexity of Organizational Life , 1999 .

[15]  D. Barry,et al.  Strategy Retold: Toward a Narrative View of Strategic Discourse , 1997 .

[16]  J. Harrison Multiple Imaginings of Institutional Identity , 2000 .

[17]  J. D. White Taking Language Seriously: Toward a Narrative Theory of Knowledge for Administrative Research , 1992 .

[18]  Leonard C. Hawes Organizing Narratives/Codes/ Poetics , 1991 .

[19]  S. Cummings,et al.  Towards demokratia ‐ myth and the management of organizational change in ancient Athens , 1997 .

[20]  Edward J. Ottensmeyer Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose: Aesthetics as a Way to Know Organizations , 1996 .

[21]  Antonio Strati,et al.  Aesthetic Understanding of Organizational Life , 1992 .

[22]  M. Ebers Understanding Organizations: The Poetic Mode , 1985 .

[23]  C. Fletcher The 250lb man in an alley , 1996 .

[24]  Carol D. Hansen,et al.  Storytelling: An Instrument for Understanding the Dynamics of Corporate Relationships , 1993 .

[25]  D. White `It's Working Beautifully!' Philosophical Reflections on Aesthetics and Organization Theory , 1996 .

[26]  Carl Rhodes,et al.  The legitimation of learning in organizational change , 1997 .

[27]  Yiannis Gabriel The Unmanaged Organization: Stories, Fantasies and Subjectivity , 1995 .

[28]  William B. Stevenson,et al.  The Formal Analysis of Narratives of Organizational Change , 1998 .

[29]  H. Tsoukas The firm as a distributed knowledge system : A constructionist approach , 1996 .

[30]  Yiannis Gabriel Beyond Happy Families: A Critical Reevaluation of the Control-Resistance-Identity Triangle , 1999 .

[31]  Yiannis Gabriel ON ORGANISATIONAL STORIES AND MYTHS: WHY IT IS EASIER TO SLAY A DRAGON THAN TO KILL A MYTH , 1991 .

[32]  C. Vance Formalising Storytelling in Organisations: A Key Agenda for the Design of Training , 1991 .

[33]  David M. Boje,et al.  Organizational Storytelling , 1994 .

[34]  Mary E. Boyce Organizational story and storytelling: a critical review , 1996 .

[35]  Roderick E. White,et al.  An Organizational Learning Framework : From Intuition to Institution Author ( s ) : , 2007 .

[36]  M. Glynn When Cymbals Become Symbols: Conflict Over Organizational Identity Within a Symphony Orchestra , 2000 .

[37]  J. Greco Stories for executive development , 1996 .

[38]  Rafael Ramírez,et al.  Wrapping form and Organizational Beauty , 1996 .

[39]  A. Segal Flowering feminism: consciousness raising at work , 1996 .

[40]  R. Barker,et al.  The Use of Narrative Paradigm Theory in Assessing Audience Value Conflict in Image Advertising , 1999 .

[41]  David M. Boje,et al.  Consulting and Change in the Storytelling Organisation , 1991 .

[42]  Michael E. Pacanowsky,et al.  Organizational communication as cultural performance , 1983 .

[43]  Karl E. Keick Cosmos vs. chaos: Sense and nonsense in electronic contexts , 1985 .

[44]  J. Brown,et al.  Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation , 1991 .