Contemporary Issues in Management - Essay Example

Topic: Lecturer: Presentation: Introduction Contemporary organisations operate in a global dynamic competitive environment and as such need to leverage corporate social responsibility as atool for sustainable competitive advantage. The modern society is very conscious of environmental issues and requires organisations to be ethically responsible if they have to thrive. Different organisations have different stories concerning how they deal with various issues concerning ethics and many especially large organisations go to the extent of advertising their corporate social behaviours to the internal and external stakeholders so as to build their image and reputation. This is keeping in mind that corporate social responsibility can help in improving the bottom line of the organisation. Oragnisation storytelling is one tool that is often used by management to enhance a deeper understanding of the organisational life so as to make sense of the world and also as a powerful influencing and communication tool. It can also be used by organisations as a change management technique. Boje (2014, 3) defines storytelling as one incorporating three genres: beginning, middle, end (BME) narrative, living story, and antenarrative. In his quantum storytelling he argues that organisations start with a narrative then proceed to antenarrative as more events are experienced and as the capitalist ways of production keep changing. The living story is in the middle as it relates to present happenings in the organisation. In this narrative, there are story tellers who try to make sense of the organisation such as leaders, employees, clients and researchers and also storytelling involving listenting, interpreting, futuring, reporting, visioning and other techniques but what is most important is listening and interpreting. Storytelling can also involve gossip, rumours, and exaggerations. Organisational research storytelling contributes much to our understanding of organisation misbehaviour, organisation mismanagement and economic malpractices especially in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crises. This essay is to examine these aspects of management using Boje’s quantum stories. Boje’s quantum storytelling is an interfusion of quantum physics with storytelling (Boje & Tonya, 1). It is about how modern human experience of new perceptions about material reality is affected by quantum physics. It is based on five assumptions. The first assumption Boje makes is that we are energy bodies in an energy universe hence storytelling in organisations is more about energy and momentum than about fixity and stability (Boje, 2014, xxvi). This is especially so in the global stage where organisations keep changing and expanding to various areas locally and overseas and forming alliances and mergers. As such, organisations have a lot of stories to tell as they move from local environment to global. The secong assumption is that organisational storytelling is about quantum energy and momentum in waveforms hence quantum storytelling is agential in its effects. It is a path through which organisations follow. The third assumption is that organisations are composed of linear, cyclic, spiral, and rhizome antenarrative processes (Boje, 2014, xxvi). Fourth assumption is that quantum storytelling space refers to all possible spaces of co-location of wave-form matrix. It is thus capable of collapsing into probabilities into manifesting actualities of organising. Lastly, it assumes that quantum energy vibes between organisation storytelling and organisation materiality can be changed at level of potentiality of waveforms (2014, xxviii). In this sense, there are actors and actants who are agential and connected to the storytelling field. The methodology of qunatum storytelling is ontological-inquiry or “what it means to be authentically aware Being-in-the world in a heart of caring and concern” (Boje, 2012). The Heart-of Care in this case entails datability, dwelling, deserving, disclosing, directionality and deployment. Datability is use of dates or primordal. Dwelling entails in-place, in-time or in-being. Desevering is joining together matter, space and time while disclosing entails the potential of the achieving the goals so desired. Directionality is the upward and downward spiral as antenarratives are being experienced or narrated whilst deployment involves connecting to different environmentssuch as work environment and consumers. The quantum field on the other hand, consists of epistemic, ontic and ontological (Boje, 2012). Epistemic consists of narratives that are stuck in the past, ontic represents living stories while ontological is primordal lifetime birth-to-death in heart of care in-time future. The ontological sense explains why the organisations are engaged in philanthropic activties and have great concern for the environement which would prompt it to act ethically. As noted earlier, quantum storytelling is a triad of theree sorts of time tales: narrative, living story and antenarrative. The narrative proceeds by “classifying time into segments, from ‘beginning, middle, to end,’ a multiplicity of straight lines, a linear logic of classification of everything into tree-structures (Boje &Tonya, 2014, 4). It began before Aristotle and has become the dominant mode of storytelling by managers. It is a narrated story whereby story gives account of events or incidents. The narrative is formed after addition of plot and coherence to the storyline and involves a lot of speculation and ambiguity sensemaking (Boje, 2001, 4). It has the tendency to annihilate or silence the contents living stories. For example, Dolan explains how the storytelling among workers due to changes in capitalism system. He argues that workers contrary to how they used to work in assembly lines and open offices hence getting a chance to talk are now concentrated each at his/ her own cubicle leaving no room for storytelling (Dolan, 2007). The work of story telling has been left to managers who talk in boardrooms as opposed to traditional workplaces where they talked in tea rooms. They also talk in meetings and other areas where they meet. In this sense, the living stories of woerkers have been deterritorialized and silenced. This gives room for the management to employ unethical practices since they do not get a voice or pressure from employees to be socially responsible. Research (Ditler-Simonsen & Wenstop, 2013, 142) indicates that employees are key stakeholders in influencing senior management to employ ethical practices. They are also a way through which others get to know what is happening in the organisation. If they are silenced, chances of getting and spreading such stories are minimal hence the management can easily cook up stories or reports aimed at improving organisation image. All will be heard about is the great epic stories of executives who have instituted sustainability measures in the organisation and which have worked and rarely of failures. A good example given by Boje is Wells Fargo whose story is that of a great bank whose strategies by CEO John G Stumpf incresed bank income from $ 159 Million to $81 billion but nothing is told of how it intended to acquire Wachovia which is a failing company which had been forced to sell by the government and that the bank had lost $89 billion in the 20007-09 financial crises (Boje, 2014, xxiii). References Boje, David M (2001) Narative Methods for Organisational and Communication Research, London: Sage. Boje, D,M and Henderson, T.L (eds), (2014), Being Quantum: Ontological Storytelling in the Age of Antenarrative, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Buchanan, D and Bryman, A (2009), The Sage Handbook of Organisational Research Methods, London: Sage Denning, Steve (2000) The Springboard: How Story Telling Ignites Action in Knowledge-era Organisations, Boston: Butterworth Heinemann. Denning, Steve (2007) The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action through Narrative, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dolan, G (2007), From the Tea Room to the Boardroom, London: Sage Read More