Group items tagged

This paper is based on a study of personal experience narratives told by witnesses of the September 11th attacks in calls to C-SPAN. Drawing on research on narratives of ordinary and extraordinary experiences and witnessing, the author offers a framework for analyzing the structure and function of eyewitness accounts. Analysis focuses on methods callers use to show and tell the audience where they were, what they were doing, and what they were thinking at the time of the attacks. Verbal, visual, and structural features of these narratives are highlighted, with particular attention given to orientation and ideation components of the narratives. The design of these components and their location within the callers' stories are shown to construct the narratives as eyewitness accounts, position the callers and audience members as witnesses, and engage all in a therapeutic sensemaking process.

Narrative techniques both provide a complementary form of what we will call pre-hypothesis research, but further that the use of narrative research techniques produces, through a single intervention, quantitative conclusions supported by narrative context, fragmented knowledge databases, and a mechanism for measuring impact and more complex issues such as mapping ideation cultures.

Snowden again... Looks like a fairly interesting book is on its way, as well...?

How storytelling communicates complex ideas In this group of pages, some of the underlying mechanisms of storytelling and its relationships to knowledge and knowledge management are revealed: Narrative vs abstract thinking : Jerome Bruner Communications as media : the conventional view of Roman Jakobsen Communications the interactive view : Walter Ong Communications as social flow : David Bohm Stories and archetypes : Carl Jung Engineering vs ecological viewpoints : John Seely Brown Storytelling and the literature of persuasion : Homo vendens Storytelling and genuine persuasion : Storytelling and seduction : Jean Baudrillard Storytelling and openness : de Bono Why isn't storytelling taken seriously? Who's to blame? Why does science despise storytelling? Storytelling and zen: Eastern concepts of knowledge Storytelling and post-modernism: Jean-François Lyotard

In this paper, we challenge the universality of three basic assumptions prevalent in organizational decision support and strategy: assumptions of order, of rational choice, and of intent. We describe the Cynefin framework, a sense-making device we have developed to help people make sense of the complexities made visible by the relaxation of these assumptions. The Cynefin framework is derived from several years of action research into the use of narrative and complexity theory in organizational knowledge exchange, decision-making, strategy, and policy-making. The framework is explained, its conceptual underpinnings are outlined, and its use in group sense-making and discourse is described. Finally, the consequences of relaxing the three basic assumptions, using the Cynefin framework as a mechanism, are considered.

The Cognitive Edge weblog contains an interesting exchange on the nature and role of storytelling in organizations. It was prompted by blog author Dave Snowden's reading of an article by Gabrielle Dolan of One Thousand and One, an Australian consultancy specialising in storytelling as a tool for organisational development. Dave Snowden is well known for his work on the role of narrative and complexity theory in organizational sensemaking.