Daniel Geiger

Narratives and Organizational Dynamics Exploring Blind Spots and Organizational Inertia

This article aims to demonstrate how narratives have the potential to bring about organizational inertia by creating self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. Drawing on extensive interview data from a U.K. bio-manufacturing company, the empirical analysis shows how such narratives emerge by constructing a web of related, self-reinforcing narratives reflecting a consistent theme. The analysis demonstrates how the dominant (success) narrative remains vivid despite the existence of deviating narratives and severe crisis. In particular, the empirical findings illustrate how narratives construct a self-sustaining frame of reference, preventing the organization from questioning the principles underlying its past success. The discussion explains how narratives create self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. It contributes to our understanding of the role of narratives in organizational change efforts and illustrates the way such self-reinforcing blind spots become a potential source of organizational inertia and path-dependence.

The Significance of Distinctiveness: A Proposal for Rethinking Organizational Knowledge

In this article we attempt to provide some reorientation for the use of the concept of knowledge within management studies. The point of departure is the striking discrepancy between the great importance nowadays attributed to knowledge (knowledge economy, knowledge resources, knowledge societies, knowledge-intensive firms, etc.) on the one hand and the vague and blurring conceptualizations of knowledge on the other hand. Informed by philosophy of science a revised concept of knowledge is suggested that basically draws on communication and reflection. The core idea is that knowledge should be treated as a distinctive term which allows for a differentiation between knowledge and non-knowledge. The suggested concept therefore makes discursive examination a central part of the notion of knowledge. In the final part we attempt to demonstrate the possible benefi ts of such re-orientation by analysing both its theoretical and practical implications.

Narratives in knowledge sharing: challenging validity

Purpose – This paper aims at extending research on narrative knowledge sharing in organizations. Current literature often assumes that narratives can provide orientation and guidance in complex task environments by conveying embedded actionable problem‐solving knowledge or practices. In this paper an empirical example of narrative‐based knowledge sharing is used as a starting point to explore knowledge sharing via narratives in more detail. It turns out to be a much more ambiguous and problematic exercise than previous studies assume.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a conceptual paper but uses a case vignette from Shell to exemplify the problem of narrative‐based knowledge sharing discussed in the paper.Findings – A possible model shall be outlined showing how inconsistent and questionable narratives could be handled in order to provide orientation. It concludes with stressing the importance of reflecting on narratives and suggests a generative interplay between narrative and argumentative modes...

Repairing Trust in an Organization after Integrity Violations: The Ambivalence of Organizational Rule Adjustments

This paper investigates how an organization attempts to repair trust after organizational-level integrity violations by examining the influence of organizational rules on trust repair. We reconstruct the prominent corruption case of Siemens AG, which has faced the greatest bribery scandal in the history of German business. Our findings suggest that tightening organizational rules is an appropriate signal of trustworthiness for external stakeholders to demonstrate that the organization seriously intends to prevent integrity violations in the future. However, such rule adjustments were the source of dissatisfaction among employees since the new rules were difficult to implement in practice. We argue that these different impacts of organizational rules result from their inherent paradoxical nature. To address this problem, we suggest managing an effective interplay between formal and informal rules.

The marriage of story and metaphor

Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due in part to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organization studies which opened a wide range of new possibilities once scholars focused their attention to organizational texts and narratives (or organizations as texts) (e.g. Alvesson and Karreman 2000, Czarniawska 1999). It is not surprising then that the literature on both metaphors and stories in their different organizational applications has grown extensively in the last 20 years. These have followed somewhat similar trajectories and explored similar possibilities. As tropes of organizational communication, both stories and metaphors have been studied as important vehicles for organizational learning and socialization as well as for exercising influence (e.g. Brown 2004); they have been examined as shaping cognitive terrains that facilitate, direct or inhibit organizational change and innovation (Geiger and Antonacopoulou 2009, O’Leary 2003); their political uses, both as vehicles of domination and as foci for challenges organizational authority, have been scrutinized (e.g. Boje 2008, Brown and Humphreys 2006, Gabriel 2005). Furthermore, the nature of organizational theory itself as possessing metaphorical and story-like qualities has been extensively debated by scholars, with the divide between logico-scientific and narrative conceptions of knowledge being increasingly problematized (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1995). Organizations themselves have been interrogated as metaphors, ranging from jazz bands to psychic prisons, and also as stories, falling into recognizable genres, such as epic, tragic or comic (Gabriel 2000). All in all, it would be fair to claim that metaphors and stories have become regular, active and no longer exotic guests in discourses of organizations. What is less widely explored is the relation between metaphor and story. Many of the leading exponents of metaphor theorizing (e.g. Burrell 1996, Chia 1996, Cornelissen 2004, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Morgan 1980, Oswick and Grant 1996, Tsoukas 1991) have been generally reluctant to enter the terrain of story and equally most storytelling theorists (e.g. Boje 2008, Rhodes and Brown 2005, Tangherlini 2000) have not ventured deeply into the field of metaphor. Story and metaphor have since Aristotle been seen as inhabiting different domains, the former firmly located in poetics, the latter in rhetoric (see, for example, Höpfl, 1995). Yet, as Czarniawska (CzarniawskaJoerges 1995, Czarniawska 1998) has argued most stories are full of metaphorical expressions and, conversely, many metaphors can be unpacked into stories and allegories. Both stories and metaphors require a certain flight of imagination above the literal and the factual. This is what makes them both memorable and also persuasive; it is also what makes them vital devices in unlocking passion, creativity and spawning innovation (Cornelissen, 2005). Yet again, it is what makes them very helpful concepts in questioning the assumptions of discourses that have become hardened or comfortable. They can both act as stimuli to original and creative thinking. This special issue grew out of a desire to explore the cross-section between stories and metaphors. In particular, we wanted to prompt an examination of the mutation of

Ever-Changing Routines? Toward a Revised Understanding of Organizational Routines Between Rule-Following and Rule-Breaking

This paper advances research on the conceptual nature of organizational routines. We examine whether and how routines contribute to organizational stability, renewal, or change. We review the “routine as change” perspective and find several important shortcomings. To mitigate some of the conceptual problems of this perspective, we develop a rule-based understanding of routines that focuses on rule-following and rule-breaking. Our model of routines clarifies the primarily organizational nature of routines. We conceptualize ways in which organizations may react to a violation of their rules and argue that it is the subtle relation between rule-following and rule-breaking that drives routine dynamics.

Unravelling the Motor of Patterning Work: Toward an Understanding of the Microlevel Dynamics of Standardization and Flexibility

This paper examines how routine patterns are recognized as either stable or flexible and which mechanisms are enacted to maintain this patterning work. We address this question through an ethnographic case study analyzing how a catastrophe management organization enacts routines in a highly dynamic setting. Our findings first of all reveal that patterns described by the participants as either stable or flexible were nevertheless both performed differently in each iteration of the routine. Our microlevel analysis shows that to enact patterns that participants perceive as stable, participants had to carry out specific aligning and prioritizing activities that lock-stepped performances. In contrast, participants perceive patterns as flexible when they enact specific selecting and recombining activities. Building on these observations, we add to extant routine literature by (1) differentiating between stability, standardization, flexibility, and change of routines and by (2) providing new insights on mindfulness in accounting for the microlevel activities enacted to orient toward a pattern that enhances standardization or flexibility in dynamic contexts. Moreover, (3) our insights point to the centrality of knowing for the enactment and recognition of patterning work.

Von der individuellen Routine zur organisationalen Praktik — Ein neues Paradigma für die Organisationsforschung?

ZusammenfassungDas Konzept der organisationalen Routine ist in den letzten Jahren zunehmend in den Mittelpunkt der organisationsforschung gerückt und wird als ein zentrales Erklärungsmuster für eine Vielzahl von organisationalen Phänomenen wie Wissen, Lernen und Kompetenzen herangezogen. Dabei werden Routinen jedoch nicht mehr lediglich im Sinne von eindeutig vordefinierten und wiederholten individuellen Handlungsvollzügen gedacht, sondern zunehmend im Sinne von komplexen sozialen Praktiken verstanden. Die sich abzeichnende Hinwendung zur Thematisierung komplexer sozialer Praktiken und die damit einhergehende Bedeutungserweiterung des Konzeptes haben eine Reihe von Implikationen für die Organisationstheorie und unser Verständnis von Organisationen. Der vorliegende Beitrag thematisiert diese Entwicklung und fragt nach der Tragfähigkeit und dem Erkenntnisgewinn, der mit der Hinwendung zu sozialen Praktiken für die betriebswirtschaftliche Organisationsforschung verbunden ist.SummaryIn recent years the concept of organizational routines has deserved increasing attention in organization studies. It is used to conceptualize, explain and understand a variety of diverse organizational phenomena such as knowledge, learning, innovation or competence. This implies that routines are no longer understood as mindless, repetitive individual action patterns but rather as complex organizational practices. This shift toward an understanding of routines as complex, collective and idiosyncratic practices nevertheless has significant consequences for our understanding of organizations. The aim of this paper is firstly to reconstruct the heterogeneous meanings of the routine concept within organization studies and secondly to critically evaluate the explanatory power of the recent shift toward a practice-based understanding of routines. It will be argued that the concept of organizational practices is a fruitful lens for studying organizations, but should, however, not be used as a substitute to the concept of routine.

Developing Organizational Narratives: a New Dimension in Knowledge Management

This chapter focuses on the recent strongly advocated idea to use stories and story-telling in knowledge management. It explores the nature of narrative knowledge as compared to other forms of knowledge, in particular discursive knowledge, and discusses its merits and shortcomings. A new concept more suited to the requirements of knowledge management is proffered, which aims at discussing and validating narrative knowledge.

The Role of Argument and Narration in Knowledge Sharing: Coping with Context, Validity, and Coherence

This paper examines the way knowledge is shared within organizations. Although current research identifies narratives as an important medium for organizational knowledge sharing because they serve as sensemaking devices and collective memory, the study shows that narrative-based knowledge sharing encounters serious shortcomings and must frequently be supplemented by an argumentative mode of communication. Furthermore, the conditions that trigger a switch from a narrative to an argumentative mode of communication are specified. Doing so clarifies the limitations of a narrative mode of knowledge sharing and provides a more sophisticated understanding of the communication strategies that are used in virtual communities.