MGTC35 Narratives on Management and Organizations

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MGTC35Narratives on Management and Organizations

• Prof. Sandford Borins
• Fall 2008

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What is narrative?

• the representation (as product and process,
  object and act, structure and structuration) of
  one or more real or fictive events communicated
  by one, two, or several (more or less overt)
  narrators to one, two, or several (more or less
  overt) narratees.
• Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology (2003)

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Why narrative?

• Vivid illustration (specificity, description,
  visual images) of
• Management skills
• Organizational structures, processes, incentives
  and cultures
• Ethical dilemmas
• Management concepts
• Personal/professional relationship

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Why narrative?

• Narrative skill
• Understanding, critiquing, creating narratives
• Business plan
• Forensic accounting report

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Types of narratives (genres)

• Examples of genres
• Heroic narrative (organizational turnaround)
• Things fall apart (organizational failure)
• Bildungsroman (shit happened, but I survived and
  learned from it)

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Types of narratives (contexts)

• Examples of contexts
• Entrepreneurial business
• Large corporations
• Public high schools
• Government organizations
• Dominant versus counter fables

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Types of narrators

• All-knowing narrator (19th century novels, 20th
  century documentaries)
• Observant minor character (ficelle, note-taker)
• First person narrator (political memoir, I
  Claudius)
• Behavioural narrator (cinema verite camera)
• Unreliable or compromised narrator doesnt
  remember, misremembers, misinterprets
• Multiple narrators

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Print versus visual media

• Print (novel)
• Usually sole author
• Inner consciousness expressed
• Long time span, many episodes
• Readers imagination supplements description
• Reading as solitary experience

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Print versus visual media

• Visual (film, television series)
• Collaborating creators
• Specificity of visual images
• Hard to present thinking
• Limited number of episodes, short-time frame
• Viewing in cinema as collective experience

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Narrative and accuracy

• Historically accurate
• Based on a true story
• Roman a clef
• Completely invented

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Universe of choices

• Genre (3) X Context (4) X dominant or
  counter-fable (2) X type of narrator (6) X print
  or visual (2) X level of acuuracy (4) 1152
  possibilities

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Erik Erikson (1902-94)

• American developmental psychologist and
  psychoanalyst
• Post-Freudian theory of human development
• Famous for identity crisis
• Application in this course to understanding
  relationship between work and personal life

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Erik Eriksonlife cycle as narrative
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Everyone Rides the Carousel

• What is the message of the film?
• What techniques are used to convey the message?
• Does Eriksons model of ego development make
  sense to you?