Three historical narratives on advertising self-control in Brazil

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze how, in three different contexts, the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation narratively uses its past to build an official history concerning its origins that legitimates advertising self-control as a hegemonic narrative. Design/methodology/approach By using the historical research and the “uses of the past” approach, this study identifies, analyzes and confronts three organizational histories of Conar’s origins (both its official and unofficial versions) in the context of the creation of the Brazilian system of advertising self-regulation. Findings After a thematic analysis of the documentary sources, the narratives on the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation’s origins and the self-control process were grouped into three versions: the narrative under the military regime: 1976/1980; the narrative during the process of re-democratization of the country: 1981/1991 and the contemporary narrative: from 2005 onwards. These narratives were confronted and, in consequence, provided, each of them, a different interpretation of the context surrounding the creation and justification for advertising self-control. Originality/value The study shows how a consumer defense organization re-historicized its past strategically to gain legitimacy in three different ways through time. It also reveals that organizations strategically use their past to build an intended vision of the future, thus having more agency than the hegemonic literature in management studies usually guarantees. Finally, it exposes the malleability of past narratives through which organizations play a critical role in the ongoing struggle for competing uses of the past. Therefore, the study identifies different organizational stories through time that allow researchers to reflect on several strategic uses of the past by organizations.

Grassroots INGOs in Africa: Perspectives on What They Are (and Are Not?)

This research explores philanthropic transfers and exchanges between and among the North and the South, namely, through grassroots international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), which tend to fall outside of the aid industry. The broad research question that frames this study is as follows: How do these organizations, grassroots INGOs in the global North and their partner organizations in the global South, represent and legitimize their work within the larger realm of development aid in Africa? The research conducts a comparative case study through the analysis of the narratives via organizational stories and artifacts produced and used by grassroots INGOs in the United States and partner organizations in Kenya. The findings show how grassroots INGOs distinguish themselves from what are the traditional images of global philanthropic exchanges and development aid, producing disassociative claims. The research derives a set of properties of grassroots INGOs to explain these perceived distinctions.

Stories at Work

Organizational stories are commonplace and a crucial force shaping employee behavior. We show how an organization's choice of story can be formally incorporated into its design problem. In our simple model, the organization optimally becomes either “purpose driven,” which involves pairing flat money incentives with a story that emphasizes the importance of generating output (e.g., saving lives, putting a person on the moon), or “incentive driven,” which involves pairing steep money incentives with a narrower story that emphasizes the importance of maintaining ethical standards (e.g., maintaining quality, helping peers). We illustrate the applicability of these results using a variety of examples.

Reimagining organizational storytelling research as archeological story analysis

PurposeWe should understand stories told in organizational settings in relation to the time, space and process of their telling. This, however, is problematic since many researchers, as a matter of habit, take organizational stories out of their context and process because they tend to collect their stories through interviews. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachIn order to accept organizational stories taken out of context and process, the author looks toward archeology and its method of interpretation of artifacts as a metaphor to guide future storytelling analysis. The author argues that storytelling researchers need the analogy of archeological interpretation of artifacts to be more convincing in their quest to discover meaning.FindingsIf one sees stories as artifacts from past utterances that are lost to the moment in which they were uttered, which the metaphor of archeology allows one to do, then the goal is to reason out a coherent narrative out of the stories collected by describing their formal attributes, their spatial attributes and their chronological inference. After which, one might fit the collected stories within the broader cultural contexts of the organization under study.Originality/valueThe author offers the idea of “archeological story analysis” as a three-step method of story analysis, which allows organizational storytelling researchers to more convincingly analyze stories collected out of their context and process. The first two steps are in the interpretation of the formal attributes and spatial attributes of the stories, while the third step (chronological inference) is an attempt to analyze storytelling intent and impact on the life of the organization.

Silencing/Voicing Transgender People at Work: An Organizational Perspective

Narratives are a means of voicing in organizations. What it follows is a short reflection concerning the challenge taken by narratives of being the lens through which hearing voice from transgender people in organizations. This paper is aimed to scrutinize in what extent the role of transgender people narratives aids inclusion in organizations, through an organizational account of the underlying meanings in writing organizational stories. The reflection is mainly based on two concepts: the first one is silence, as a way to hide themselves in the workplace, and the second one is identity, as an apparatus of comparison between individual and organizational subjectivity. In this reflection, transgender people played the role of being a source of knowledge, triggering a debate concerning voice and silence in organizations.

Our Stories Transforming Our Libraries: The York County Library System

These narratives chronicle the authors’ journeys to collaborate and discover the transformative impact that stories have on library culture and library staff. This study describes a research collaboration between York County Libraries and Penn State York. In Phase I, we collected stories from library staff as the library system was being challenged to reimage public libraries for the future. The major themes and types of organizational stories identified in the initial narrative project were presented during a county-wide all-staff in-service training. The library District Consultant (first author) and the Penn State professor (second author) then facilitated a workshop designed to lead staff in their exploration of these topics and generate a written record of their storytelling/discussions. This data became the basis for Phase II of the project and allowed the system to strategically assess its evolving culture and identity.

The Role of Stories and Simulations in the Lessons Learned Process

One of the major challenges of any organizational lessons learned system is how to ensure that this content is actually implemented: that employees can find and learn from them. While we are guided by a number of theories on how newly acquired knowledge can become institutionalized such that it becomes “the way things are done,” there is very little theory or evidence-based practice to guide us on specific implementation strategies. This paper presents specific strategies that were used to ensure that lessons learned became embedded in the organization through digital storytelling and simulation environments. Organizational stories are often very well suited to capturing and conveying complex tacit knowledge. The role of information and communication technologies such as digital libraries will be discussed and recommendation on how to best ensure individuals, groups and the organization itself can learn and continuously improve through the institutionalization of digital storytelling and simulation.

Knowledge transferred through organizational stories: a typology

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to look at organizational stories shared among academic librarians who work at the reference desk, and create a typology of the stories based on the knowledge transferred in these. Previous research suggests that stories are the main way in which organizations communicate common values, organizational rules and promote organizational learning. The main question researched here will be: what kind of knowledge is transferred through the stories shared among librarians? This is an important consideration since the meaning carried through the story can shape the employee’s perception of the organization. Design/methodology/approach – This research employed long interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire based on the works of Yiannis Gabriel (2000) as a guide. A total of 20 reference librarians working at four different academic institutions in the southern USA participated in this study. Findings – The analysis of the data reveals a typology of organizational stories shared. The main topics covered by the stories all deal with cultural knowledge exchanges, while also serve as coping mechanisms and present important organizational culture aspects. The stories shared also reflect negative aspects related to the lack of proper communication within the organizations, with the presence of rumors among the narratives shared. Originality/value – These findings can serve as a first step for the development of healthier organizational cultures in libraries and may have implications for training and development, change management, motivation and collective memory.