Once Upon A Time...Corporate Storytelling in Organizations

Abstract

The workplace is full of stories whether they are stories about workplace issues, hobbies, shared interests and employees’ personal lives. In organizations, corporate stories are utilized by leaders in order to influence members or to attain a desired goal. This research intends to answer: the kinds of corporate stories and narratives that leaders use in sustaining knowledge management and in building the identity of employees within the organization and its following sub problems: the kinds of corporate stories and narratives that leaders use, how do leaders use corporate stories and narratives in sustaining knowledge management, how do leaders use corporate stories and narratives in building the organizational identity of employees and how do leaders know that the corporate stories and narratives they use are effective in building employee’s organizational identity and in sustaining knowledge management. The researcher made use of Walter Fisher’s narrative theory of a storyteller sending messages to an ideal audience, the ideal audience will classify it as a narrative and evaluate it on two standards of narrative rationality which is narrative coherence and narrative fidelity only then can it affect or influence his beliefs and actions. In relation to the organization, the storyteller are the leaders (top management) while the ideal audience are the employees (middle and lower management) and through oral or written communication they classify the leaders’ message as narratives on their own and evaluate it based on message accuracy and message consistency only then can it affect their organizational identity and knowledge management processes. The organization chosen to conduct the study in was PHINMA Group of Companies - the parent company and 3 of its 12 subsidiaries. It is a descriptive and exploratory study to find out how the leaders of PHINMA have used corporate stories and narratives in order to build identity and manage knowledge within the organization. The research instrument used is an interview guide in a semi-structured interview format composed of 17 questions with a total number of 15 respondents. Qualitative methods of mental mapping, conceptual clustering, conversational analysis, tabulation and coding were applied by the researcher in analyzing the data. The researcher applied a three-phase method in analyzing the data gathered. Phase one: corporate stories and narratives - which discusses the basic definition of stories, the definition of corporate stories and narratives, the characteristics of a good and bad storyteller and leaders as storytellers. Phase two - classification of corporate stories and narratives - which discusses the classification of stories as affecting the beliefs and actions of the respondents on corporate identity and knowledge management and their understanding of each of the variables presented. Phase three -is corporate stories and narratives in general and on context used - on their awareness of the use of stories within the company, advantages and disadvantages of stories and lastly the specific contexts wherein the stories were used. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher can conclude that corporate stories and narratives are truly utilized by leaders in building identity and managing knowledge within an organization. The researcher recommends that a quantitative approach be taken by researchers wanting to conduct the same study in order to strengthen the validity of the results as well as relate the study to other research concepts such as organizational culture and other concepts on identity and learning.