Narratives We Organize By

Book excerpt: This book is a collection of texts that explore the analogy between organizing and narrating, between action and text. The raw material of everyday organizational life consists of disconnected fragments, physical and verbal actions that do not make sense when reported with simple chronology. Narrating is organizing this raw and fragmented material with the help of such devices as plot and characters. Simultaneously, organizing makes narration possible, because it orders people, things and events in time and place. The collection, written by organization researchers from many different countries, explores this analogy in both directions, reporting studies that show how narratives are made in situ, and applying narrative analysis (structuralist and poststructuralist) to stories already in existence. Barbara Czarniawska is Skandia Professor of Management Studies at GRI, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden. Pasquale Gagliardi is Professor of Sociology of Organization at the Catholic University of Milan, and Managing Director of ISTUD- Istituto Studi Direzionali, Milan-Stresa, Italy.