Narrative Leadership Part 4

Organization and Narrative

Organizations have narratives and through them express a reality that is accepted as “the natural order of things” (Mumby, 1987, p. 113) and “how things work” (Addleson, 2000, p. 243). Humphries and Brown, (2002) saw narratives as the essence of organizations and held that “conversations maintain and objectify reality for participants. They concluded that organizations are not merely a place of “dialogue” but that dialogue is “organization itself” (p. 422).

The discursive and dialogic ability of narrative to bind together “language, knowledge, and action” (Ludema et al., 1997) comports with our need to “construct the world that we act into” (Hopkinson, 2003, p. 1947). Organizationally, this world is one in which we create an ideology that legitimates the “meaning systems of dominant groups” (Mumby, 1987, p. 114).

These “storied hegemonic impositions” are ideological constructions; a means of “control over discursive space … designed to reproduce the active consent of the dominated” (Brown et al., 2005, pp. 314-315). We know them as the narratives of our organizations that “punctuate and sequence events in such a way as to privilege a certain reading of the world. They impose an order on reality that belies that fact that such a reading is a largely ideological construction that privileges certain interests over others” (Mumby, 1987, p. 126).

The ability of organizational narrative to create self and corporate identity, form community and privilege ideology is seen by some as worrisome. In his effort to distinguish human agency from organizational structure, particularly “repressive structure,” Foucault, as cited in Faber (2002, pp. 77-78), defined structures as “temporal constructions that emerge, for a time, as powerful and influential ways of thinking, acting, and behaving” and viewed the “rise of the modern organization, and its reification as an institution a principle threat to individual autonomy and personal agency.” In this view, organizations become a locus of control for the perpetuation of class hegemony, one willingly accepted as we “naturalize” organizations and their conferred identity (p.79).

Organizational Identity and Narrative

Organizational identity is an amalgam of member’s individual narratives with the narratives and myths of the organization. It represents what an organization does, enables its members to locate themselves and their place in the world, and “reflects the underlying values, assumptions, philosophies, and expectations of organizational life” (Hopkins, Hopkins, & Mallette, 2005, p. 17). This however is not made up monolithically or singularly but is instead “pluralistic and polyphonic” involving multiple voices “simultaneously and sequentially” (Humphries & Brown, 2002, p. 422).

That these shared narratives aid in constructing organizational identity is attested to by Brown et al. (2005) who stated, “the identities of organizations are constituted by the multiple, changing, occasionally consonant, sometimes overlapping, but often competing narratives centered on them, authored by those who participate in them” (p. 314). Organizations then can be the site of “multiple communities that each make meaning” (Churchman, 2006, p. 12) as they speak through multiple voices and perspectives (Humphries & Brown, 2002). What may appear cacophonous psychically is the process members use to arrive at a shared understanding of the organization (Addleson, 2000). Czarniawska as cited in Humphries and Brown (2002, p. 43) stated:

Not only is narrative the main source of knowledge in the practice of organizing, but, just like individuals, organizations need a coherent narrative, and identity may be appropriately conceptualized as a ... continuous process of narration where both the narrator and the audience are involved in formulating, editing, applauding, and refusing various elements of the ever-produced narrative.

Like that of individuals, the identity of organizations is constituted by “continuously evolving shared narratives” (Brown et al., 2005, p. 313). This identity is “never final but continuously constructed” as the organization’s members contribute to its ongoing development through additions of their own narratives (p. 1944). The result is that the organization becomes a unique expression that the individual identifies with.

Members aided in their personal identity formation by the organizational identity they have constructed will, “at a deeper psychological level,” define “the social identity component of their self-concepts” by drawing “on the salient images they associate with their work organization. As a result, their personal self-esteem is thus tied intimately to the identity of their organization” (Brown & Humphreys, 2002, p. 424).

In a similar vein Addleson (2000) stated:

People understand social life in conversations, which have language, relationships with others—such as family, friends, or colleagues—as well as “cultures” and communities as their ground. Businesses or other named organizations, such as churches, prisons, clubs, and offices, where people do a variety of things together, are aspects of this social life-world. (p. 237)

As individuals know themselves and gain identity through stories, so too do organizations. Acting as the “sub-texts” of organizational culture, that is, the underlying story which the members having helped construct are also aware of, organizational narratives “embed all members in a network” (Brown & McMillan, 1991, pp. 50-51) and produce an identity to which members can adhere collectively.

Collective Identity

One of the similarities that exist between organizations and other social systems is that each fosters the formation of individual identity with a group, a phenomenon referred to as “collective identity” (Armenakis, Field, & Harris, 1999, p. 99) and described as giving “meaning to individual participants actions [by] adding an additional layer of meaning” (Haenfler, 2004, p. 785). Organizations in which collective identity develops are noted for their members “cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” (Polletta & Jasper, 2001, p. 285).

Organizations also have collective practices where the interests of the individual are sublimated for those of the organization (Boje & Rhodesb, 2006). These acts form the voice of the organization becoming its “language” (Humphries & Brown, 2002, p. 313) as well as its “work” (Brown et al., 2005, p. 321). What is defining in the collective identity of an organization is not what it achieves, though important, but to what it adheres as the representative impulse of human will in the cooperation of people.

If our self-identity can be connected to that of our organizations (Humphreys & Brown, 2002), changing organizational discourse can alter our self-perception (Gubrium & Holstein, 2000) and motivate “defensive and adaptive strategies” when what is proposed is seen as diverging from what has been the “accepted institutional discourses and practices” (Churchman, 2006, p. 13). This calls for a another form of leadership: one that prior to the introduction of change initiatives will take into account organizational and individual narratives as well as the collective and individual identities involved.