Storytelling as the Effective Creator of an Ethical Framework - Literature review Example

Researchers who focus on stories are missing the point. Organisational ethics are economically determined in the last instance. BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE DATE HERE Introduction In the domain of organisational research, storytelling has received considerable interest for its purported benefits in building a cohesive organisational culture and improving leadership competencies. It is often proposed that storytelling within the organisation assists in communicating values and assisting leaders to visualise the future (Kaye 1996). Throughout history, narratives in storytelling have guided members of society on what constitutes appropriate social behaviour, reinforces a sense of cultural history, and creates a feeling of communal social identity (Holstein and Gubrium 2000). In an organisational perspective, the generalised belief is that organisational storytelling accomplishes the same objective, providing explicit meanings which form organisational member identities within the organisation itself and shape a set of unified ethical behaviours and organisational culture that drives how members view their role within organisational life. Ethics are defined as the ideologies and value systems utilised by an organisational member which governs his behaviours and decision-making processes. The notion is that moralistic stories, utilised as an organisational leadership strategy, can assist people on conforming to a set of normative ethics. However, researchers who focus strongly on organisational storytelling are missing the point, believing that stories can assist in building a cohesive, ethical organisational culture. Ethics, in reality, are economically determined and cannot be sufficiently engrained into the socio-psychological aspects of human behaviour, despite the best efforts of organisational managers and leaders. A critical discussion of storytelling as the effective creator of an ethical framework Throughout history, stories with a moralistic tenor have been utilised to create social conformity, building a sense of shame and angst in society members who might not conform to a pre-determined set of normative ethics (Zipes 1991). These strategies have been utilised at the organisational level in order to get organisational members to prescribe to a set of ethical standards and conform to the ethical ideology of management. However, Boje (1995) asserts that storytelling can be an oppressive methodology of leadership, serving as a mean of subordinating all organisational members. This method of attempting to use stories to drive ethical conformity can limit success by attempting to create a singular, grand narrative (Boje), that not all organisational members will adopt or embrace. To illustrate, Parker (2004) asserts that organisational identity is something that cannot ever be static, being a set of constructions that are constantly evolving and consistently influenced by socio-professional relationships between colleagues and the self and the dynamics of power relations within the organisation. According to Burrell (1997), a lack of imagination and creativity destroys organisational reality and culture, hence Boje (1995) may be quite accurate that any attempt to establish a singular, grand narrative of normative ethics could ultimately be detrimental to ensuring ethical conformity by diverse organisational members. Sims (2003) further criticises the use of storytelling as a means of building cultural cohesion. Middle managers at organisations might utilise compelling storytelling narratives when building discourse with disparate organisational members, however such stories might be viewed with scepticism by colleagues or even crushed by a powerful senior-level audience with incongruent values and perspectives (Sims). Therefore, it would appear that attempting to emphasise and drive conformity toward a singular normative ethical framework would be impossible as a result of human behaviour and diversity of thought as it pertains to ethical values. In fact, Boyce (1996) asserts that during the culture creation process, organisational members must be ever aware of the different meanings and values held by diverse groups and members within the organisation. Boyce suggests that there are different strains of culture being created in an organisation each and every day and different narratives and meanings being constructed as a result of routine organisational activity. Hence, gaining compliance to a set of narrative-induced organisational ethics is essentially forbidden by disparity of values of organisational members that are not going to be necessarily congruent with the ethical ideologies attempting to be imposed through organisational storytelling. From a personal perspective, this has been witnessed and illustrated in professional practice in an organisation that attempted to utilise narratives in this fashion to build compliance to a set of normative ideals. This organisation maintained a significant amount of power distance between managers and subordinates, with managers coerced by gaining authority and serving to oppress opinion and suggestion from workers who were perceived as being threats to their autocratic ambitions. In fact, literature asserts that managers in this type of environment will resist changes related to decentralisation when their authority levels are perceived as being endangered (Skarlicki and Folger 1997). Storytelling, such as predicting that the organisation would be in a better competitive position, in the future, by adopting a singular code of ethics, met with failure and disparate cultural groups disrespectful and mocking toward the use of narratives to promote a singular ethical stance. For the scornful groups viewing managerial efforts to promote storytelling metaphors to describe the past and future condition of the business, the narratives were viewed as self-indulgent and even infantile which was offensive to a very mature and rather sophisticated group of subordinates. Many members of the organisation viewed this effort to use metaphors to build conformity to an idealised set of normative ethics as hypocritical, recognising that narratives illustrating how becoming a supreme ethical organisation was driven solely by profit motives and not any legitimate sense of morality. Therefore, storytelling was viewed as being condescending whereby subordinates grew resentful and non-compliant recognising that this new emphasis on building a code of ethics was solely driven by an economic-based agenda. Karl Marx also asserted that ethics are driven by economic agenda even though the Communist-based ideology sought to create a moral man that prescribed to a deontological ideology (Holmes 2009). Marx realised the tangible inter-dependencies between economics and sociology which underpinned the relativism of evolutionary ethics (Marx 2010). In the personal reflection case, subordinates being inundated by outlandish narratives and metaphors realised that it was the personal utility of managers (economic growth for the organisation) promoting a new sense of ethical superiority, therefore new efforts to use stories to build a set of normative ethics was consistently rejected. The literature on storytelling as being a viable method of building normative ideals suggests that it is successful when managers share personal experiences that inter-weave private lives and emotions with organisational life (Gabriel 2000). However, the descriptions and narratives utilised were incongruent with the tangible realities of organisational life and organisational activity, hence subordinates exposed to these stories saw it as a futile effort to gain compliance and conformity to absorbing these new ethical values. Employees in the organisation knew that conformity to new normative ethical codes of conduct and embrace of these ideals consistently reiterated through narration would only be to serve a shrouded attempt to enhance organisational profitability. This not only frustrated subordinates, but angered them for how they were being patronised through foolish and largely irrelevant narratives about the company’s past and its alleged similarity to the ethical situations of managers in their private lives. Now, Jalan, Sinha and Ulus (2014) assert that narratives defend against the anxieties created through organisational failures and organisational members draw on these narratives when apprehensive or concerned about such failures. In personal experience, subordinates being coerced to adopt the singular ethical norm being promoted through storytelling maintained a culture of performance and job role perfection to receive rewards, but maintained very little commitment and dedication to the organisation itself. These employees were task driven and strove to meet organisational objectives under a transactional management ideology where high performance was rewarded financially. As far as the longevity of the organisation was concerned, employees always believed they could exit the company and find a better position if the organisation ultimately met with economic or competitive failure. The notion of narrative therapy simply was not applicable or relevant to the personal reflective case study. Whilst it was common for subordinates (who maintained their own disparate culture from management) to share stories and experiences, it was rarely based on an agenda of changing attitudes or emotions of colleagues. Rather, these shared experiences and narratives were designed to foster more effective co-working environments and make the time spent in the organisation more tolerable and motivating at the socio-professional level. It was only when these narratives maintained congruency with the values and experiences of colleagues that they were effective in shaping relationships and the quality of group working. Narratives which were disparate from the ideals held by the subordinate population would likely have met with similar resistance and lack of empathy, which was what managers using their own metaphors and narratives were experiencing when denying that ethical agenda was founded on economic objectives. Therefore, narratives being utilised in the aforementioned scenario consistently attempted to iterate a sense of shared ethical (or unethical) experiences that were deemed largely irrelevant to the subordinate organisational population. The more that metaphors and shared personal experiences were included in these narratives, the more employees exhibited their inherent lack of commitment toward the organisation and the managers themselves. Employees, at the psychological level, recognised that the true motivation for using storytelling to capture the interest and attention of employees to strive toward a new ethical framework was to improve organisational longevity at the financial level. Even the images included in organisational literature serving as textual narratives which promoted this ethical necessity was like something from a children’s illustrated, moral novel. In this case, fantasy attempted to gain advantage over tangible facts, defying the rational in exchange for absurd metaphors, thereby representing the technology of foolishness. Cortazzi and Jin (2007) suggest that emotions and behaviours can be influenced by narratives, shared learning through stories and the ability to reflect upon the experiences of others. Whilst this might be true in some instances, as it pertains to ethics, the ethical ideologies shared by individuals are so disparate within an organisation and driven by one’s experiences with culture and lifestyle that no volume of stories or narratives can change these potent and inherent sets of values and norms. To the employees in the personal reflection case, even their own ethical behaviours were driven by economic considerations: the receipt of performance-based bonuses and other benefits. Sharing stories and experiences about morally-themed scenarios which were then compared to organisational life simply were not powerful enough to supersede economic motivation and were therefore rejected as normative, cultural ambitions that could become unified ethical ideals by very diverse organisational members. Hence, researchers that focus strongly on organisational storytelling are missing the many different aspects of legitimate organisational existence that shape beliefs, values and experiences. These researchers seem to view all organisations as being static with individuals being, in essence, social automatons that have the same perceptive and rationalisation capacities that rely on shared stories and narratives simply to cope with changing organisational environments. These researchers do not appear to recognise that diverse sociological and psychological characteristics that make up individual personalities will potentially conflict with the effectiveness and productiveness of shared stories to build ethical conformity. Economic motivations, both by managers and subordinates in the reflective case study, dominated whether storytelling was perceived as being viable or whether such strategies were irrational and irrelevant. To illustrate, the myths being created by the management team were colliding with legitimate aspects of the past, current and long-term state of the organisation and its subordinate members. The economic agenda underpinning all ethical motivations was mythological in nature based on the method by which managers were selling this motivation through narratives, hence creating an environment of resistance, resentment and where the autocratic regime running the organisation was losing respect and admiration. Storytelling, whilst utilised to promote a new set of ethical rituals, did little to transform organisational culture so long as managers adamantly concealed the economic objectives of the entire narrative program. Whilst these narratives did not promote any type of organisational misbehaviour (as this would have forbidden receipt of economic rewards for performance), these myths maintained a limited life cycle and would not be tolerated longitudinally by subordinates who did not (and would not) share the same managerial ideologies related to the ethical organisation. Buckler and Zien (1996) assert that effective leaders are able to express a compelling vision that is iterated through storytelling, empowering others to experience past organisational experiences and put these into a framework for exploiting future organisational opportunities. Employees exposed to stories and narratives are said to express their commitment to the organisation by understanding and empathising with these stories. However, yet again, Buckler and Zien’s perspective does not allow margin for recognising human disparities in psychology and behaviour that are variables impacting whether such stories are deemed motivating or inspirational. In the reflective case study, employees, without any narratives or stories, would have adopted virtually any ethical mandate if there had been promise of bonus or performance incentive, thus shaping the organisational culture to an ethical climate. All of the symbolic objects utilised in managerial narratives and textual literature regarding the new ethical agenda became a type of peripheral imagery which completely detracted from maintaining focus on the central concept of organisational morality. All of the anecdotes selected by managers to share experiences and emotions were viewed as nothing more than the product of the capitalistic machine and were thereby rejected as a motivation for effective action. Conclusion Researchers, therefore, are missing the point when focusing on storytelling, largely because researchers do not seem to recognise that sharing experiences, sharing emotions and using anecdotes and metaphors are not methodologies desirable to all organisational members. If managers in the personal reflective case study had understood their audience sufficiently, they might have selected a more sophisticated set of stories and narratives to gain motivation and commitment. However, outside of this, both managers and employees, as indicted as a tangible phenomenon by Karl Marx, were primarily motivated toward ethical behaviour as a result of utility achieved through economic agenda. The whole concept of narrative therapy as a means of building relationships and organisational commitment is simply unrealistic. Leveraging stories as a means of fostering performance, ethical conformity, motivation and commitment to the organisation is not going to be effective in all organisations. Economics underpin ethical behaviour of most organisational members and it will likely be difficult to supersede these ambitions, especially when the stories selected are deemed inappropriate, incongruent to personal beliefs or generally representing a lack of socio-professional sophistication. Indeed, researchers focusing on the effectiveness of organisational storytelling are missing the point. If society is to assume that all organisations are parallel and maintain statistically-congruent environments and that all individuals behave and perceive in the same fashion, then perhaps storytelling would be deemed an effective managerial activity. However, personal experience dictates that this is irrational and as it pertains to ethical values, little can be done through shared narratives to induce ethical compliance unless there is an economic incentive for doing so. The examples provided in this essay would seem largely to confirm this supposition quite substantially. References Boje, D.M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-Land, Academy of Management Journal, 38(4), pp.997-1035. Boyce, M.E. (1996). Organisational story and storytelling: a critical review, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 9(5). Buckler, S. and Zien, K. (1996). The spirituality of innovation: learning from stories, The Journal of Product Innovation Management (September). Burell, G. (1997). Pandemonium: towards a retro-organisation theory. London: Sage. Cortazzi, M. and Jin, L. (2007). Narrative learning, EAL and metacognitive development, Early Childhood Development and Care, 177(6/7), pp.645-659. Gabriel, Y. (2000). Storytelling in organizations: facts, fictions and fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holmes, L. (2009). Communism: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holstein, J.A. and Gubrium, J.F. (2000). The self we live by: narrative identity in a post-modern world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jalan, I., Sinha, S. and Ulus, E. (2014). Narratives of fate and misfortune in organisational life: stories of success and failure, Culture and Organization, 20(5). Kaye, M. (1996). Myth-Makers and Story-Tellers. Sydney: Business & Professional Publishing Ltd. Marx, K. (2010). A contribution to the critique of political economy. Ithaca: International Library Publishing Co. Parker, M. (2004). Becoming manager: or, the werewolf looks anxiously in the mirror, checking for unusual facial hair, Management Learning, 35(1), pp.45-59. Sims, D. (2003). Between the millstones: a narrative account of the vulnerability of middle managers’ storying, Human Relations, 56(10), pp.1195-1211. Skarlicki, D.P. and Folger, R. (1997). Retaliation in the workplace: the roles of distributive, procedural and interactional justice, Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, pp.434-443. Zipes, J. (1991). Fairy tales and the art of subversion: the classical genre for children and the process of civilization. London: Routledge. Read More