Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity (New Practices of Inquiry) - Softcover

Czarniawska, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226132293 ISBN 13: 9780226132297

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

Synopsis

The most common social phenomenon of Western societies is the organization, yet those
involved in real-world managing are not always willing to reveal the intricacies of their
everyday muddles. Barbara Czarniawska argues that in order to understand these uncharted
territories, we need to gather local and concrete stories about organizational life and subject
them to abstract and metaphorical interpretation.

Using a narrative approach unique to organizational studies, Czarniawska employs literary
devices to uncover the hidden workings of organizations. She applies cultural metaphors to
public administration in Sweden to demonstrate, for example, how the dynamics of a
screenplay can illuminate the budget disputes of an organization. She shows how the
interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis,
and her investigations ultimately disclose the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow
routines in order to change, and decentralize in order to control. By confronting such
paradoxes, we bring crisis to existing institutions and enable them to change.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Using a narrative approach unique to organizational studies, Czarniawska employs literary devices to uncover the hidden workings of organizations. She shows how the interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis, and her investigations ultimately disclose the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow routine in order to change, and decentralize in order to control. By confronting such paradoxes, we bring crisis to existing institutions and enable them to change.

About the Author

Barbara Czarniawska holds the Chair in Management at the Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Gothenburg University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0226132293
• ISBN 13: 9780226132297
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242