Storytelling Organizational Practices Managing in the quantum age

Once upon a time the practice of storytelling was about collecting interesting stories about the past, and converting them into soundbite pitches. Now it is more about foretelling the ways the future is approaching the present, prompting a re-storying of the past. Storytelling has progressed and is about a diversity of voices, not just one teller of one past; it is how a group or organization of people negotiates the telling of history and the telling of what future is arriving in the present.

With the changes in storytelling practices and theory there is a growing need to look at new and different methodologies. Within this exciting new book, David M. Boje develops new ways to ask questions in interviews and make observations of practice that are about storytelling the future. This, after all, is where management practice concentrates its storytelling, while much of the theory and method work is all about how the past might recur in the future.

Storytelling Organizational Practices takes the reader on a journey: from looking at narratives of past experience through looking at living stories of emergence in the present to looking at how the future is arriving in ways that prompts a re-storying of the past.

Part I: Introduction to Pragmatic Storytelling 1. What is Organizational Storytelling? 2. A Brief History of American and European Pragmatic Ethics 3. What are the 12 Paths of COPE Pragmatic Storytelling? 4. What is Pragmatic Storytelling in the Quantum Age? Part II: Pragmatic Storytelling Theory 5. Brief History of Storytelling Theories and Philosophies 6. Materiality Storytelling Rhetorics 7. Quantum Storytelling Hermeneutics 8. Pragmatic Storytelling of Spirituality in Organizations Part III: Cope Pragmatic Storytelling Praxes 9. Vulgar: "Whatever Works" Storytelling Praxes of Organizations from Elevator Pitch to Storytelling Branding 1 0. Critical: Pragmatic Storytelling: A Critique of Appreciative Inquiry, Elevator Pitch, Stump Speech, and Springboard Praxes 11. Ontological: Storytelling the Unstoryable by Restorying, Storytelling Field Concept, and Ontological Coaching Praxes 12. Post-Positivist: New Experiments in Open Systems Praxis 13. Epistemic: Restorying Knowledge Management and Appreciative Inquiry Storytelling Praxes Part IV: Pragmatic Storytelling Research Methods 14. Critical Pragmatic Storytelling Methodology 15. Ontological Pragmatic Storytelling Methodology 16. Post-positivist Pragmatic Storytelling Methodology 17. Epistemic Pragmatic Storytelling Methodology 18. S5 Research: Putting COPE Storytelling Pragmatic Methods Together with Science, Spirituality, Sustainability, Science, and Spirals of Experimentation 19. Autoethnography Method: Dinner with Zygmunt Bauman 20. Epilogue: Dragons and Quantum Shamanic Storytelling

David M. Boje has a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University, Denmark. Dr Boje is past Division-chair of the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management and incoming President of the Board of Governors of the Standing Conference for Management and Organization Inquiry. He is Founding Editor of the Tamara Journal of Critical Organization Studies and Associate Editor (2003--2009) and formerly Editor (1989--2003) of the Journal of Organizational Change Management.