Analysis of a Business Narrative - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages There is renewed realization of the fact that organizations are continuously seeking a means of communication that synthesizes and not that which analyzes information (Sole & Wilson, 2004). Story telling offers an ideal answer to this quest, which explains the increasing use of narratives by many organizations today. Knowledge by itself serves no purpose to organizations. However it is by application that such knowledge becomes useful to an organization. Therefore, all stories in organizations have the basic intent to share knowledge, which helps in promoting effective actions in the behaviors of all the involved stakeholders or in achieving a specific task within the organization. One importance of narratives in organizations is in informing the clientele “who we really are” (Dunning, 2005). In this attempt, for the narrative to be effective, executives have to do something that may at first appear uncomfortable, which mostly involves talking about the failures involved and the down times that the company has experienced in coming to being (Dunning, 2005). Self-disclosure in narratives is one of the best ways to accomplish trust and to inspire others. For instance, in the narrative about Baidu invention, though the company does not narrate about their down times and failures, the narrative clearly indicates that the brand was formed with the Chinese people in mind and had specific tools that accommodated the diverse needs of the Chinese users. The company draws its identity from its intention to serve the Chinese clientele and thus was designed with this customer segment in mind. This is portrayed by the fact that the search engine recognizes 38 ways in which a Chinese can say I. Recognizing such user specific features defines a clear identity of the company in relation to its clientele. On the other hand, Google in its invention offers a captivating narrative of the failures and the downtimes that haunted the young company. For instance, BackRub was discontinued for taking a high bandwidth than necessary, and that the young Google Company had to start from a garage and not an office. Stories that disclose failure and hardships within a company in its years of operations have a paradoxical effect of instilling trust and encourage openness among its audience (Dunning, 2005). Google offers a simple story about its startup, which elicits both humor and confidence in all their operations. Such a story enhances confidence, courage and inspires others within the company and outside to be confident in their operations. Narratives in organizations do share values and norms. The norms and values are passed through different generations within the organization, and are derived from the organization’s past to describe its intended future (Sole & Wilson, 2004). Leadership theories empathize on the need to offer a robust context and vision of a firm. This objective is better accomplished using stories that have more emphasis on the strong qualities of the organization in the past; narratives place organizational qualities in future’s context, while at the same time helping in identifying possible future opportunities in an organization (Sole & Wilson, 2004). For instance, during Baidu’s design and launch, the detailed knowledge of Chinese language and culture was instrumental in ...Download file to see next pagesRead More