From summer outings to christmas parties: Constructing organizational identity through storytelling during company events

Abstract

he research paper aimed to seek how storytelling during company events construct the organizational identities of employees. This study is vital for organizations for it will inform them on the status of the existing organizational identity that their events impart to their employees. The researcher aimed to identify what kinds of stories are shared during company events, discover significant benefits of storytelling in constructing organizational identity and to identity criteria of stories about the organization's identity shared during company events. For the purpose of this study, the researcher focused on answering the main problem: How does storytelling during company events construct employees' organizational identity. The research was only limited within stories shared during company events as well as the research only analyzed the varied interpretations of each employee to the stories with regards on how the stories affected the construction of organizational identity. The study was focused on the descriptive and exploratory ways of collecting data hence, the researcher's approach was qualitative. The researcher collected the data by conducting one-on-one interviews to 20 employees from Quorum Group of Companies or more famously known as Toby's Sports, five respondents coming from the top management and 15 respondents coming from the lower and middle management. Through conceptual clustering, the researcher was able to analyze all the data gathered. The results of the study showed that the stories shared during company events were success, motivational and inspiring stories about the company (QGC), the owners and members of the organization as well. The data also presented that storytelling is beneficial in constructing an employee's organizational identity because stories about the company were easy to share and were very comprehensible to the member of the organization. And lastly, the criteria of a story used to share organizational identity should contain success, motivational and inspiring stories about the company's history, its profile, the members and the bosses as of the organization. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher concluded that storytelling during company events is a vital tool in constructing employees' organizational identity.