Narratives and Numbers - Essay Example

Running Head: NARRATIVES AND NUMBERS Deconstructing and Reconstructing Narratives and Numbers Here Affiliation Here Deconstructing and Reconstructing Narratives and Numbers From anthropology to psychology, from history to pop culture, from journalism to advertising, narratives are seemingly everywhere. Regardless of its apparent visibility and diversity of applications, however, one must contextualize narratives to understand it in terms of corporate and organizational stories. In generic terms, narratives are often equated to stories, and stories associated with narratives. Incorporating both modern and post-modern viewpoints1, narratives in this sense are reflections of reality, shaped by human experience, driven by temporal plot elements, alternating between fact and meaning. Gabriel (2000), however, aims to make a distinction between narratives and stories. He emphatically argues that "not all narratives are stories", further stressing that "factual or objective accounts of events that aspire at objectivity rather than emotional effect must not be treated as stories." (p. 5) In the context of organizational dynamics, Gabriel's definition of storytelling singles out "workplace folklores" that provide entertainment value, requiring interpretative plot and coherence. He alludes to these stories as metaphorical windows into an organization's character, culture, and politics. His framework focuses on narratives with a temporal (time) element, a spatial setting (place), a cast of characters, a plot involving conflict and resolution, and most importantly, a certain continuity. Gabriel sees organizational stories as those that use literary narrative devices and motors to move a story forward. By molding the shape of the story and developing its structure, these devices basically manipulate the response of the reader or audience to the story. Because Gabriel believes that stories should be concerned with evoking emotional response rather than meaning, he asserts that organizational stories also focus on using narrative devices to elicit a particular response. Some of the examples used in organizational stories are: twists where the plot takes an unexpected turn; dialogue for stronger characterization; suspense or building the story to a point where the succeeding events are unknown and anticipated; effective description of tension or an atmosphere where conflicting ideas are created; and withholding key information to maximize suspense and tension. Using the voice of a narrator - which ranges from first to third voice - is also an effective tool. Other narrative motors and devices include: time transitions (such as flashbacks or foreshadowing); a diary or journal format; and even an epistolary format, or a story written in the form of a personal letter. Similarly, Gabriel believes that tropes also play an important role in dynamic organizational storytelling. A trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play in words, expanding a conceptual framework through figurative language. The use of tropes (such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony) in stories enables the storyteller to create impressions, organize experience, and create memories. Viewed in this perspective, Gabriel's definition of "stories" excludes opinions, proto-stories, and reports. Gabriel insists that these snippets of pseudo-stories are actually non-stories because of their fragmented natures2 - that is, they do not employ the elements and devices of "stories" and are not dynamic enough to elicit a response. In contrast, Boje (2001) believes that these fragments are essential as sense-making mechanisms within organizations. Therefore, organizational narratives are not "stories", but "antenarratives".(p. 1) Boje's etymology of "antenarrative" has a dichotomous implication. First, "ante" is a story before a narrative; i.e., a "pre-narrative". A narrative is something that adds coherence to the storyline; whereas an antenarrative is a story told before the narrative. "An antenarrative is an 'ante' state of affairs existing previously to narrative; it is in advance of narrative." (2001, p. 1) Second, the word "ante" pertains to a certain extent of gambling and speculation. An antenarrative is, in Boje's words, a "bet that you can tell a pre-story that will become a story that is world-changing." (2004, p. 2) More explicitly, antenarratives precede a cohesive story. It is an account of a story that has not yet materialized. The characters have yet to be selected; the plot has yet to be established. "Antenarrating means you are trying to recontextualize or decontextualize. Antenarratives depend upon an expanding sociometry, a growing network of actors to work in bits of context, to send the antenarrative along its way to becoming a story." (2004, p. 1) Unlike narratives, which are collective memories of a story that has already occurred, antenarratives are still an ambiguous conjecture of the story. It is a strictly sense-making mode of storytelling3, devoid of a distinct beginning, middle or ending. Boje aptly likens this to a state of coming to be. Viewed in this light, it would seem that Boje's "ante" stories are a more appropriate approach to organizational storytelling than Gabriel's structured entertainment-driven "workplace folklores". To expound this point further, however, one must first appreciate organizational storytelling as a unique construct. Golding (2001), for example, places the concept in perspective. In his book "The City: Inside the Great Expectations Machine", investment analyst Tony Golding (2001) gives us a fascinating insider's perspective on the dominance of institutional investors in the City's4 financial fabric. Indeed, these institutions exhibit colossal control over the City, making or breaking empires in their wake, as opinions shift and financial forces collide. In the seat of power are the fund managers, a breed of professionals who control the fate of funds, ultimately responsible for the shape and form of investments. It is on this group that we must focus our attention in expounding Boje's concept of "ante" narratology. Historically, looking back at City activity in the last two decades, fund managers were regarded as risk takers. They were conveyed as adrenalin-driven managers who picked stocks on a whim, gambling on speculation, overflowing with bravado. (Golding: 2001, pp. 159-161) In today's highly volatile landscape, however, fund managers must become more analytic, relying on quantitative and qualitative data for coherent, well thought out decisions. "The bold and heroic stockpicker has been replaced by a more considered, more analytical type of individual." (Golding: 2001, p. 160) They base their stock-selection decisions on a set of "hard" and "soft" factors - "hard" being tangible numeric data and share performance ratings; "soft" being intuitive unempirical speculations based on available corporate narratives. (Golding: 2001, pp. 162-171) Let us first examine the factors that drive the value of shares. Logically, numbers play a significant role. "Good financial numbers, both historic and forecast, are crucial." (Golding: 2001, p. 163) Additionally, the structure of an organization, the "purity" and exposure of a corporation, size and reliability, among others, are key ingredients.5 Generally, fund managers prefer simplicity in organization structures, favoring simple, transparent, and more comparable accounting information. They also prefer companies with "pure plays", those with a single, rather than a diverse, business focal point. Additionally, when a fund manager invests in a corporation, he is "buying exposure" into that particular industry. "Fund managers consciously invest in industries that give them the exposure they need." Furthermore, institutions are always looking for activity and movement within organizations. For example, a corporation that always initiates mergers and acquisitions, or appears to be doing something (instead of nothing), are more attractive. Although some types of businesses have more appeal, fund managers are attracted to size, liquidity, and diversity (provided they do not exceed the bounds of purity), among other factors. (Golding: 2001, pp. 162-170) At the forefront of both hard and soft factors, however, is the fund manager's response to "stories in boxes". Golding (2001) explains this point simply by stating, "investors like to categorize companies in terms of their stories." (p. 165) Golding's reference to "stories" covers several diverse facets. They may be written or verbal, numeric or contextual. For example, fund managers are influenced by the personalities that run corporations. In evaluating the "story" of an organization, fund managers actually assess the ability of its top executives to deliver performance targets. The CEO in this sense is one part of the story; the FD comprises the other part. The process of evaluation is an ambiguous concept, encompassing traits as diverse as past performance, strength of character, visibility, and evidence of commitment. Fund managers sift through available information - i.e., "stories in boxes" - to ascertain reliability. This, in fact, is antenarrative in nature. Most personality profile press releases are narratives - indeed, stories - published to highlight the achievements of a top executive. In this sense, the "story in a box" is obviously driven by corporate agenda. In the same vein, the following article reports on activity within the Generali organization, one of the largest insurance providers in Italy: "Generali pushed ahead with its plans to expand outside Italy, announcing it had entered the Bulgarian insurance market with the acquisition of a 51 per cent stake in Orel-G. The move comes just two weeks after Generali, one of Europe's largest insurance groups, cancelled a large share buy-back in order to buy Toro, a smaller Italian rival, for up to 3.9 billion euro ($5.0 billion) and signaled it would seek acquisitions outside its home market." (New York Times Deal Book, 2006) Because fund managers are generally attracted to activity and movement within corporations, this NY Times article apparently aims to draw the interest of institutional investors. In this case, the underlying "story" is that of an Italian corporation expanding its reach beyond Europe. It hints at stability, expansion, and quite simply, movement and activity. Institutions must sort and sift through a wealth of information released by corporations to influence "buy" behaviors. Analysts have long lost their credibility, and an "objective" business analysis has increasingly lost its value. Golding traces this trend to the institution's dawning realization that analysts, more often than not, have a personal agenda. (2001, pp. 204-2007) To quote Golding (2001, p. 206): "Fund managers now spend less time reading research and listening to sell-side analysts. Much research adds little to what they know already and much is repetitive. Managers are more selective in what they read and who they talk to....Fund managers and buy-side analysts remain circumspect, operating on the basis that most sell-side opinions have a subtext. Investors sense that analysts are primarily there to support current share prices - and find reasons why they should go higher!" (Golding: 2001, p. 206) As Golding implies, fund managers have lost the appetite for research methods that lack objectivity. But without a reliable empirical research method to assess "facts", how can fund managers arrive at the soundest stock-selection decision One probable answer is Boje's antenarrative approach. As an apparatus for academic research, antenarratology articulates a unique approach that diverges from the traditional hypothetical-deductive analysis of linear, sequential stories. Antenarratives are multi-voiced and multi-meaning, championing a novel research methodology that puts the diversity of organizational storytelling in a unique perspective. Fundamentally, Boje introduces eight diverse perspectives in exploring antenarratives: deconstruction; grand narrative; microstoria; network methods; analysis of intertextuality; analysis of causality; analysis of plot; and analysis of theme. Each perspective presents a unique approach to story analysis, but for purposes of this paper, we shall focus on using the grand narrative method. A "grand narrative" is antenarrative "in how one story can be told in ways that erase a prior way of telling the story." (Boje: 2001, p. 10) In understanding the grand narrative, one must break the whole into compact stories and to replace a linear "mono-voiced" historical grand narrative with several multi-meaning and multi-vocal little stories. Consider this example: "Google plans to build an office and research center here that will have up to 1,000 employees, people who had been briefed on the plan said Monday night. The announcement is set to be made Tuesday morning by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm at a news conference at the state Capitol in Lansing. Google is expected to open the center in downtown Ann Arbor, the hometown of the University of Michigan, where Larry Page, one of Google's founders, earned his undergraduate degree in engineering. Mr. Page, a Michigan native, has maintained close ties with the university; his company is in the midst of a project to digitize all seven million volumes in the university's libraries." (New York Times, 2006) In evaluating the grand narrative above, one must ask who the primary characters are. Does the narrative "voice" pertain to Google executives Yes, obviously. The local government that will benefit from Google's investment Possibly. The residents who anticipate the job opportunities Perhaps. The language resonates with a range of voices; the context implies a myriad of interpretations. By shattering the grand narrative into several pieces, one can better understand the nuances. Indeed, Boje's approach is a groundbreaking alternative to narrative organizational study. It goes beyond the single-voiced, third-person monologic narrative analysis to closely examine the components of antenarrative. Antenarrative analysis puts organizational stories in a new light, resituating narrative analysis to view the fragmented stories which are "the currency of organizational communication". Supporting this theory, Fraod, Johal, and Leaver (2006) believe that analysts must assume the existence of "multiple polysemic (local, internal, and intimate) narratives that illuminates the context of the "plural, fragmented nature of organizations and the difficulty of organisational change." (p. 218) Recognizing the need for novel, light touch concepts of management intervention that "inform but do not overwhelm understanding of management after financialization", the authors introduced a variant of reconstructing data - this time in the context of numbers. Through three in-depth case studies, the authors emphasized the importance of organizational narratives while also stressing the significance of analyzing long-term financial results. Froud et al acknowledges the importance of organizational narratives and their impact on institutional investors, who predominantly give more weight to corporate and industry narratives over the discourse analysis of terms and constructions. This framework puts numbers at the forefront, because numbers are fundamental in evaluating the reliability of "promises" made by top management. In assessing if an organization can meet what Golding (2001) calls "pre-regulated performance benchmarks" (p. 170), numbers play a crucial role. (Froud, et. al: 2006, p. 181) Analysts and business journalists, for example, apparently have a lot of trust on numbers. Most analyses arise from the interpretation derived from organizational numbers, but the credibility of the numbers which are the basis for analysis is yet another issue. Froud illustrates this point by offering a dual meaning for the word "fact". On one hand, fact is a datum of experience, one known to be absolutely true. On the other hand, fact can be a thing assumed as a basis for inference. (Froud, et. al: 2006, p. 233) The latter definition presupposes that facts are independent of, and not generated by, narratives. According to Froud, the financial numbers are not facts in the empirical sense. Rather, they are facts in the inference sense. It is for this reason that analysts and the business press often use numbers to verify company narratives as truth or fiction. Taking this point further, we can state that financial numbers "are socio-technically constructed in ways which often allow several different narratives to find empirical support." Pro-forma statements, for example, are complex numbers which are not narratives in themselves. However, they can be a resource which analysts can select, use, and put together to weave a story. The numbers "do not speak for themselves" and can ultimately be reformulated into a variety of patterns to indicate strength or weakness, success or failure. However, the flexibility of interpretation does not substantiate relativism in terms of numbers and narrative analysis. "If corporate management could choose its own numerical indicators of success for each new report, few companies would fail." (Froud, et al: 2006, p. 235) Indeed, creative accounting is limited by the constraints established by general market consensus. For example, share price, earnings, and sales revenues are the standard, generally accepted sets of numbers for evaluating shareholder value. These numbers are then compared to the larger picture of the specific industry, such as product market growth, market share, as well as sectoral factors and special industry-specific indicators (such as average revenue per user in mobile phone companies). Creative accounting also has limits in terms of analysts' propensity for reporting time slips between "forward-looking company narratives" about plans and purpose, and "backward-looking financial reports", which are about results and delivery. In essence, numbers are compared against corporate goals. If the accounting figures do not mirror last year's corporate narrative, then analysts will observe the discrepancy or corroboration between numbers and narratives. Discrepancy and corroboration are crucial constructs in the analysis approach presented in Financialization and Strategy (2006). Froud expounds on narratives and their restricted capacity against financial numbers, which often present a series of obstinate factors such as market constraints. Thus, the numbers and narrative approach integrates and compares the subtexts with verifiable numbers (such as performative initiatives) to present a "story" with more clarity. However, Froud also stresses that incongruities may be expected, as the narratives and numbers approach does not rely on sweeping generalities and oversimplification of data, as evidenced in existing empiricist techniques. (Froud, et. al: 2006, p. 181) Indeed, according to Froud, numbers may provide either discrepancy or corroboration to the overall narrative. "Financialization and Strategy" expresses the difficulty of generating numbers that substantiate the story: "Elaboration of a narrative is only part of the challenge for senior management: the practical problem is to generate the financial numbers to corroborate the story which, in the case of discrepancy, is usually reshaped and jointly authored outside the company by analysts and business journalists." (2006, p. 182) When unexpected losses or profits raise questions about the quality of management and market judgments, numbers are said to provide an incongruity. More complex forms of discrepancy are ambiguous at best, usually resulting from several indefinite factors. Discrepancies that are considered "simple" often take the form of a general interest story, usually high profile enough to land in the pages of a business periodical, such as this example: "Topps, the venerable purveyor of trading cards and Bazooka chewing gum, remains in a sticky proxy fight with an activist hedge fund shareholder that wants wholesale change at the company. The latest salvos came Tuesday when Timothy E. Brog, managing partner (and sole employee) of Pembridge Capital Management, released a letter to other shareholders urging them to support his slate of nominees to Topps' board. The letter argued that Topps, which makes baseball and Pokemon cards, has consistently failed to improve its finances for years, even as it fought off efforts to try new turnaround strategies." (New York Times Deal Book, 2006) The example above is an excerpt of an article that raises questions about the corporate reputation as well as the strength and credibility of the personalities that comprise the top management. The numbers, in this case, reveal a blatant and news-worthy underperformance as well as mounting pressure to improve shareholder value. On the other hand, more complex stories of discrepancies are rarely published by the business press, primarily because these stories often involve more intricate and varied discrepancies. More often than not, the information is not released by the parties involved, and the stories instead are visible only in a slow trickle of data from the financial sector. "The brevity of most newspaper reports and the complexity of such results discourage complex analysis." (Froud: 2006, p. 239) On a more positive light, however, numbers can at times corroborate the organizational narrative - meeting performance targets and delivering corporate-set benchmarks. The following example provides an unexpected success story amid a financially troubled landscape: "The road to the public markets in Milan has been littered with casualties lately, with Pirelli Tyre recently becoming the latest Italian company to withdraw its planned initial public offering. No such fate befell Piaggio, however. Shares of Italian company, which makes the Vespa scooter, staged strong gains on Tuesday after it raised about $400 million in an I.P.O." (New York Times Deal Book, 2006) Froud, however, asserts that corroboration is just as interesting as discrepancy, because corroboration does not offer a conclusion. Instead, one must view corroboration as a starting point for further evaluation: "Apparent corroboration often vindicates a narrative whose causal identifications may be fundamentally awry. This is easiest to see in the case of grand narrative about the new economy." (2006, p. 239) Ultimately, indeed, numbers are just a resource which can be drawn upon to corroborate or undermine corporate narrative. In this sense, numbers should not be the standard for evaluation, but rather, numbers should basically signify the first step towards a more efficient, more systemic form of analysis. In effect, the use of narrative and numbers as evaluative constructs is not an unyielding methodology. Instead, it should be a flexible approach geared at analyzing contexts rather than generalities. The best form of analysis, in fact, is one that integrates detail and complexity in ways that are both culturally informed and empirically sophisticated. References Boje, D. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communications Research. Boje, D. (2000, 5 April). Using Narrative and Telling Stories. Retrieved July 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://business.nmsu.edu/dboje/ Boje, D. (2006, 1 June). Story Escaping Narrative Prison. Retrieved July 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://business.nmsu.edu/dboje/ Boje, D. (2004, 25 June). What is Antenarrative Retrieved July 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://business.nmsu.edu/dboje/papers/what_is_antenarrative.htm Froud, Johal, Leaver (2006). Financialization and Strategy (2006) pp.122-136 Gabriel (2002). Story Telling in Organizations. Golding, T. (2001). The City: Inside the Great Expectation Machine. Maynard, M. (2006, 11 July). Google to Put a Research Center in Michigan. Retrieved 2006 July from the World Wide Web: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/technology/11google.html_r=1&oref=slogin Sinclair, J. The Impact of Stories. Retrieved July 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://www.ejkm.com/volume-3/v3i1/v3-i1-art6.htm Unknown. (11 July 2006). Generali Shopping Outside its Home Market. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/p=5100 Unknown. (11 July 2006). Tropps Trades Barbs with Hedge Funds. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/p=5156 Unknown. (11 July 2006). Shares of Vespa Maker Race Higher. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/p=5154 Read More