Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research

David M Boje

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780761965879, 9780761965862
• eBook ISBN: 9781446223727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Verwaltung

`The book is a unique and excellent introduction to postmodern narrative analyses? - Organization Studies

`[This book] should succeed in putting the

metaphorical cat amongst just about every metaphorical pigeon that might

imaginably take flight within the organization and communication research

arenas. Story time will never be the same again, nor will interpretative

research? - Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney

`Timely and first rate. It nicely

stretches a reader?s thinking about the topic? - Thomas Lee, University of Washington, School of Business

`David Boje is a pioneering theorist in organization studies and management... [His book] is yet another example of Boje?s pioneering spirit and concern for exactitude. [His] scholarly account of narrative and antenarrative methods is both corrective and exploratory of how stories must be understood in terms of their own internal dynamics, and not viewed as static entities.

Boje?s book is a magnificent start... A book that breaks new ground in organizational analysis, this is a must-read for researchers and practitioners in the fields of organization and management studies? - Adrian Carr, University of Western Sydney

`Boje masterfully shows how to analyze texts and ideas before they are reduced and fitted into the dominant ideological frameworks of the day. [He] provides a powerful tool for achieving greater democracy in how we approach doing social science... [and] liberates our capacity to make meanings for ourselves? - Paul Hirsch, Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management

`This is an important book. It is a major methodological contribution to critical, postmodern studies of organizations and management. It is essential reading for critical management scholars? - Robert P. Gephart, Jr., University of Alberta School of Business

`David Boje has emerged as the leading postmodern thinker in management theory and organization science. His prolific output lights the path for others to follow in a field awakening to the challenge of postmodern critical theory. Updating and revising narrative theory for the prevailing "postmodern condition," Boje masterfully reconstructs the concepts and methods of storytelling, as he subverts the dominant principles of modernist organization theory. He offers a subtle and complex notion of narrative... This impressive book should leave an indelible mark on management and organization studies? - Steven Best, University of Texas, El Paso

An essential guide for academics and researchers needing to look at alternative discourse analysis strategies. As a research tool, narrative methods have become increasingly useful in organization studies, where much research involves the interpretation of ?stories? in some form. This methodology can be applied where qualitative story analyses can help to assess interview, newspaper or web document stories for research projects.

In this book, Boje sets out eight analysis options that can deal with storytelling, recognizing that stories in organizations can be self-destructing, flowing, networking and not at all static. In so doing, he shows ways in which narrative methods can be supplemented by ?antenarrative? methods, where fragmented and collective storytelling can be interpreted.

A valuable resource that will be widely used in organizational or communications research, for graduate level qualitative methods seminars and by researchers wanting to do story analysis.

David Boje is Professor at the New Mexico State University. He is also on the editorial board of the journal Organization.

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Deconstruction analysis

Deconstruction is antenarrative in action. Every story excludes. Every story legitimates a centred point of view, a worldview, or an ideology among alternatives. No story is ideologically neutral; story floats in the chaotic soup of bits and pieces of story fragments. Story is never alone; it lives and breathes its meaning in a web of other stories. And, every story since it is embedded in changing meaning contexts of multiple stories and collective story making, ‘self-deconstructs’ with each telling. Deconstruction is both phenomenon and analysis. It is phenomenon because ‘story deconstruction’ is all the constructing and reconstructing processes happening all around us. It is analysis, as I have come to read it. I will speak of two levels: the level of action and the analytic level.

I will follow Derrida in asserting that the stories are self-deconstructing on their own. But I differ because I do posit several analytical steps. These are steps I will describe as ‘story deconstruction’ analysis. Of course, my deconstruction is already unravelling and can be deconstructed, having the traces of its own self-deconstruction. Here I will briefly define deconstruction, specify several analytic steps and develop examples.

What is deconstruction?

Deconstructionists point out the instability, complex movements, processes of change, and the play of differences and heterogeneity that make stability, unity, structure, function and coherence one-sided readings. Structure, form and coherence are stability metaphors readers impose upon narrative to render them as object-like. Deconstructionists argue that each reading is an active disturbance and a metaphor-projection by a reader that constructs the narrative-object. We do not need to deconstruct management and organization stories since, however authoritatively they are told and however logically they are narrated, they are already deconstructing and reconstructing without the help of an analyst. Indeed, just our reading and retelling of a management story is a deconstructive action.

There are excellent studies and reviews of the relation of deconstruction to critical theory and postmodern organization studies. For example, critical theorists such as Alvesson and Willmott (1996) seek to marry deconstruction to the critical theory revival of Marxist critiques of ideology. Without searches for ideology, critical theorists were concerned that deconstruction became just another formalism, anti-historical, politically conservative, and like the other narratologies, lacking a social change project. Alvesson and Deetz (1996) called for organization studies to look at critical theory and postmodern theory as complementary, stronger together than apart. See Kilduff’s (1993) deconstruction analysis of March and Simon’s classic text Organizations and Martin’s (1990) deconstruction of an executive’s narrative of a manager’s pregnancy.

Should we define deconstruction?

‘Deconstruction,’ argues Mark Currie in his book on Postmodern Narrative, ‘can be used as an umbrella term under which many of the most important changes in narratology can be described, especially those which depart from the very scientific analysis by which it operated before poststructuralist critiques impacted on literary studies’ (1998: 3). Currie’s project is to merge structuralist and poststructuralist narratology, and thus he coins the term ‘socio-narratology’.

Stories are not ideology-neutral, not even those formal science narratives that stress realism, verifiability and replication. Social, economic and political values intrude upon narratives. Narratives in organization studies and in the Wall Street Journal are ideological, and legitimate the empire building of leaders, nations and organizations. In the alternative presses and the world wide web, however, the boycotts of critical and postmodern activists tell other stories. Since deconstruction can and does expose ideological tracks behind a status quo story line, there is ample resistance.

Definitions of deconstructions are avoided. One I like is by Joanne Martin. She defines deconstruction:

as an analytic strategy that exposes in a systematic way multiple ways a text can be interpreted. Deconstruction is able to reveal ideological assumptions in a way that is particularly sensitive to the suppressed interests of members of disempowered, marginalized groups. (1990: 340)

For me, deconstruction is a postructuralist epistemology, not a formula-method with steps and procedures. Defining deconstruction may be contrary to the spirit of Derrida’s writing. Yet, deconstruction often does involve ways of reading that decentre or otherwise unmask narratives that posit authoritative centres. ‘According to Derrida, all Western thought is based on the idea of a center – an origin, a Truth, and Ideal Form, a fixed Point, an Immovable Mover, an Essence, a God, a Presence, which is usually capitalized, and guarantees all meaning’ (Powell, 1997: 21). But, caution is in order. If we just replace one centre with our own authoritative centre, we have fallen into our own trap. The point then is not to replace one centre with another, but to show how each centre is in a constant state of change and disintegration. The more a narrative works to control a centre, even one with a grain of truth, the more the narrative spirals out of control.

Misinterpretations of deconstruction

Jacques Derrida (1999: 65–83) gave an interview published by Kearney and Dooley (1999) that I think resolves four basic misunderstandings:

1. Is deconstruction a method? Derrida contends that deconstruction is not a philosophy or a method, nor is it a periodizing phase or a moment (1999: 65). Rather, deconstruction happens. It is like the entropy that is all around us. Within organization studies, to paraphrase Derrida (1999: 72), there is a history of concepts that are being transformed, deconstructed, criticized and improved. The same is true of organizations: the concepts, theories, paradigms and narratives are being deconstructed. Transformations, deconstruction and reformation are part of the ongoing organizing process. Nevertheless, I think there are ways to trace the influence of deconstruction as Table 1.1 presents. This has to do with paying attention to the heterogeneous, multiplicity of textual and intertextual processes from duality to resituation. But, I freely admit these are my own reconstructions of Derrida. Yet, as Derrida remarks ‘the strategy of deconstruction is: I interpret a way to understand micro-power and ‘what powers may be in such and such a context’ (1999: 74). Deconstruction as a strategy, not a method, traces the micro-power of textual process, exposing centralizing and unravelling aspects, making less visible aspects more apparent.

2. Does deconstruction equal destruction? Derrida (1999) contends that deconstruction is not ‘negative’ it is something that is happening, and it does not imply that construction is not also happening. ‘I have always insisted deconstruction is not destruction, is not annihilation, is not negative’ (Derrida, 1999: 77). And he continues, ‘as soon as you realize that deconstruction is not something negative, you cannot simply oppose it to reconstruction. How could you reconstruct anything without deconstruction?’ (1999: 77).

3. Is deconstruction extreme relativism? There are some critics who contend that there must be only one truth and that admitting that there is not means all truths are equal or relative. What such an argument ignores are the grounded and situated aspects of discursive networks among stakeholders. As Derrida responds:

What is relativism? Are you a relativist simply because you say, for instance, that the other is the other, and that every other is other than the other? If I want to pay attention to the singularity of the other, the singularity of the situation, the singularity of language, is that relativism? … No, relativism is a doctrine which has its own history in which there are only points of view with no absolute necessity, or no references to absolutes. That is the opposite to what I have to say …. I have never said such a thing. Neither have I ever used the word relativism. (1999: 78)

Table 1.1 Story deconstruction guidelines (adapted from Boje and Dennehy, 1993)

Story deconstruction
1.	Duality search. Make a list of any bipolar terms, any dichotomies that are used in the story. Include the term even if only one side is mentioned. For example, in male-centred and/or male-dominated organization stories, men are central and women are marginal others. One term mentioned implies its partner.
2.	Reinterpret the hierarchy. A story is one interpretation or hierarchy of an event from one point of view. It usually has some form of hierarchical thinking in place. Explore and reinterpret the hierarchy (e.g. in duality terms how one dominates the other) so you can understand its grip.
3.	Rebel voices. Deny the authority of the one voice. Narrative centres marginalize or exclude. To maintain a centre takes enormous energy. What voices are not being expressed in this story? Which voices are subordinate or hierarchical to other voices (e.g. Who speaks for the trees?)?
4.	Other side of the story. Stories always have two or more sides. What is the other side of the story (usually marginalized, under-represented, or even silent)? Reverse the story, by putting the bottom on top, the marginal in control, or the back stage up front. For example, reverse the male-centre, by holding a spotlight on its excesses until it becomes a female centre in telling the other side; the point is not to replace one centre with another, but to show how each centre is in a constant state of change and disintegration.
5.	Deny the plot. Stories have plots, scripts, scenarios, recipes and morals. Turn these around (move from romantic to tragic or comedic to ironic).
6.	Find the exception. Stories contain rules, scripts, recipes and prescriptions. State each exception in a way that makes it extreme or absurd. Sometimes you have to break the rules to see the logic being scripted in the story.
7.	Trace what is between the lines. Trace what is not said. Trace what is the writing on the wall. Fill in the blanks. Storytellers frequently use ‘you know that part of the story.’ Trace what you are filling in. With what alternate way could you fill it in (e.g. trace to the context, the back stage, the between, the intertext)?
8.	Resituate. The point of doing 1 to 7 is to find a new perspective, one that resituates the story beyond its dualisms, excluded voices or singular viewpoint. The idea is to reauthor the story so that the hierarchy is resituated and a new balance of views is attained. Restory to remove the dualities and margins. In a resituated story there are no more centres. Restory to script new actions.

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It is not that ‘one can say anything’ that matters; it is that there are socially situated limits and ‘what one can assert’. There is a juridical and political limit on extreme relativity. The charge of relativism begs the question: can there be an ethic in postmodernism and poststructuralism? Bauman (1993) asserts there is a postmodern ethics. As Derrida puts it ‘I take into account differences, but I am no relativist’ (1999: 79).

4. Is there an outside to text? Derrida is often critiqued for saying there is nothing outside of the text, a move which would deny that there are birds, trees and the Holocaust. But, what did he say? ‘Il n’y a pas dehors-texte’ is Derrida’s most misinterpreted slogan, and according to Currie ‘does not mean there is nothing outside the text as most commentators have taken it. It is closer to “There is no outside-text’’’ (1998: 45). The confusion is that Derrida indicates that outside the text are other texts, but also material conditions of textual production, and text traced into material conditions (i.e. factories, schools, bombs, genocide and war). Derrida clarifies that ‘what I call the “text” is not distinct from action or opposed to action’ (1999: 65). A text is not the pages of a book, it is a much broader concept that includes the politics and ethics of action. ‘The distinction between truth and reality is absolutely elementary, as is the distinction between truth and veracity; that is, to say something is true does not mean that you say something is real’ (1999: 77).

With apologies to Derrida, I will outline eight analytic moves to decentre and deconstruct stories (see Table 1.1).

The eighth move

Critics of deconstruction call my first seven tactics in Table 1.1 mere destruction, but I think that is because they do not see or maybe refuse to see the end game, the eighth move, as deconstruction is controversial. Structuralists have raised counter-charges about the political right politics of deconstructionist, Paul de Man, in a witchhunt for his wartime journalism with the Nazi propaganda machine. ‘The wartime journalism – mostly inoffensive reviews for a collaborationist newspaper in Belgium – was widely viewed as confirmation of the latent fascism in deconstructive narratology’ (Currie, 1998: 7). There has been a backlash from this controversy about deconstruction and ideology in Organization Science (Boje, 2000a; Weiss, 2000). Others have said I err because I make deconstruction too easy and too accessible. A few students have told me that deconstruction is negative thinking and does not lead to solutions or to change of any kind. I do not apologize for making it accessible and I contend deconstruction can result in change and solutions. Many critics, I believe, do not make the eighth move. The eighth move, as presented in Table 1.1, is to resituate the dualities, voices and traces, and its hierarchy into a new rendering of a story. In this restorying, there is the possibility of new action, of a way out of hierarchy and domination. Of course at the action level, resituation is happening anyway, to analyse it is to note its unfolding.

Narrative constructs centres that marginalize or exclude. For example, in a bureaucracy, men are often given the central roles and become the spokesmen for the organization, while women’s voices are silent, not authorized to speak for the corporation (Clair, 1998). If we reverse the male-centre, by holding a spotlight on its excesses until it becomes a female centre, this may be fair, just and reasonable, but it would fall short of what we seek in deconstruction. That is, a resituation of the narrative so that there are no more centres, male or female. We can make the same case about race, ethnic and managerial control narratives that are centred on one element at the exclusion of others. To maintain a centre takes enormous energy. And since no narrative is an island, but in a dynamic context of a plurality of other narratives, the centred position self-deconstructs without any pushing, shoving or editing on our part. The epistemology of deconstruction is one of dynamic intertextuality, of constant change and self-deconstruction.

Eight deconstructive moves

Duality search

I assume stories are told in ways that seek centres and proliferate many binary opposites: male/female, organization/environment, white/black, heterosexual/homosexual, quantitative/qualitative, management/worker, permanent/temporary, old/young, etc. The point of reading a story for its dualizing terms is to see the play of differences, how each term seeks to represent many different terms. In male/female, for example, both ‘male’ and ‘female’ are cover terms representing many variations. There are macho males and gentle males, gay and straight males, just as there are variations of femininity. Derrida writes of reading to see how the text (or story) self-deconstructs, how the author of a story has reversed his/her own (dualized) hierarchy of binary terms, privileging the marginal over the dominant. For example, privileging a male story over a female story, or a particular masculinity or femininity over others. Like structuralism and formalism, deconstruction is sensitive to binary oppositions in narrating, but looks for the unstable qualities of binaries, not their stabilizing struc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Introduction
• 1 Deconstruction analysis
• 2 Grand narrative analysis
• 3 Microstoria analysis
• 4 Story network analysis
• 5 Intertextuality analysis
• 6 Causality analysis
• 7 Plot analysis
• 8 Theme analysis
• References
• Index