Using material from three qualitative studies into the social psychological processes surrounding uncertainty and change in organizations, this paper explores the insights gained from conceptualizing narratives as a bounded space that accommodates disruptions while providing safety in uncertain conditions. The empirical material illustrates how narratives are used to transmit permanence and collective knowledge while allowing for self-development and the managing of emotions. The use of narratives to make sense of change processes is particularly relevant in regard to the current widespread use of digital technologies for communication and information sharing. The paper suggests that the fragmentation and plurivocality that new digital technologies bring to the workplace can be framed, contained and managed safely within collectively created narrative spaces.
Cet article explore l’hypothèse que les récits sont un lieu qui permet aux membres d’un groupe d’effectuer un travail psychologique pour assimiler les perturbations de l’organisation. On s’appuie sur trois études qualitatives sur les processus psychosociologiques accompagnant l’incertitude et le changement dans les organizations. Le matériel empirique montre comment les récits sont utilisés pour assurer la continuité et transmettre la connaissance collective, tout en permettant le développement personnel et la gestion des émotions. L’utilisation de récits pour donner un sens aux processus de changement est particulièrement intéressante dans le contexte actuel d’un usage accru des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication. On suggère que la fragmentation et la plurivocité que les nouvelles technologies numériques apportent dans le travail peuvent être encadrées, contenues et gérées de manière plus rassurante dans des espaces narratifs partagés.
Alonso, A.M. ( 1988) ‘The effects of truth: re-presentations of the past and the imagining of community’, Journal of historical sociology1(1): 33-57.
2.
Alvesson, M. ( 1995) Management of knowledge-intensive companies. Berlin: De Gruyter.
3.
Bartlett, F.C. ( 1932) Psychology and primitive culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
Baudrillard, J. ( 1995) Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press.
5.
Bauman, Z. ( 2000) Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
6.
Bell, D. ( 1993) Communitarianism and its critics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
7.
Boje, D. ( 1991a) ‘The storytelling organization: a study of storytelling performance in an office supply firm’, Administrative science quarterly36: 106-26.
8.
Boje, D. ( 1991b) ‘Consulting and change in the storytelling organization’ , Journal of organizational change management4(3): 7-17.
9.
Boje, D. ( 2008) Storytelling organization. London: Sage
10.
Borgmann, A. ( 1999) Holding onto reality. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
11.
Brockmeier, J. and Carbaugh, D., eds (2001) Narrative and identity. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
12.
Bruner, J.S. ( 1987) ‘Life as narrative’, Social research54(1): 11-32.
13.
Bruner, J.S. ( 1990) Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14.
Bruner, J. ( 1991) ‘The narrative construction of reality’, Critical inquiry18: 11-21
15.
Bruner, J. ( 1996) The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16.
Bruner, J.S. ( 2008) ‘Culture and mind: their fruitful incommensurability’ , Ethos36(1): 29-45.
17.
Burn, A. & Durran, J. ( 2006) Media literacy in schools: practice, production and progression . London: Paul Chapman.
18.
Castells, M. ( 1996) The rise of the network society. Oxford : Blackwell.
19.
Ciborra, C. ( 2002) The labyrinths of information: challenging the wisdom of systems. New York: Oxford University Press.
20.
Condor, S. ( 2001) ‘Nations and nationalisms: particular cases and impossible myths’, British journal of social psychology40: 177-81.
21.
Condor, S. ( 2006) ‘Temporality and collectivity: diversity, history and the rhetorical construction of national entitativity’, British journal of social psychology45: 657-82.
22.
Conway, K. ( 2007) Illness and the limits of expression. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
23.
Coser, L.A. ( 1992) On collective memory. London: University of Chicago Press.
24.
Czarniawska, B. ( 1998) Narrative approach in organization studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
25.
Douglas, M. ( 1987) How institutions think. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
26.
Dreyfus, R. (2003) On the internet. London: Routledge .
27.
Foucault, M. ( 1980) Power/knowledge: selective interviews and other writings, edited by Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harvester Press.
28.
Foucault, M. ( 1995) ‘Discipline’, in J. D. Faubion (ed.) Rethinking the subject: an anthropology of contemporary European social thought, pp 120-38. Oxford : Westview Press.
29.
Freud, S. ([ 1933]1988) New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis . Harmondsworth: Pelican Freud Library .
30.
Fromm, E. ( 1973) Anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
31.
Gabriel, Y. ( 2000) Storytelling in organizations: facts, fictions, fantasies . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
32.
Gabriel, Y. ( 2004) Myths, stories and organizations: pre-modern narratives of our times. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
33.
Gabriel, Y. ( 2008) Organizing words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
34.
Galliers, R. and Newell, S. ( 2000) Back to the future: from knowledge management to data management. Working Paper Series, Information Systems and Innovation Group , London School of Economics.
35.
Garcia-Lorenzo, L. ( 2006) ‘Networking in organizations: developing a social practice perspective for innovation and knowledge sharing in emerging work contexts’, World futures62(3): 171-92.
36.
Garcia-Lorenzo, L. ( 2007) ‘Narrating organizational change: stories of continuity and development’, Systemica14(5): 177-91.
37.
Garcia-Lorenzo, L. ( 2008) ‘Storying collective decision-making: supporting collective action after a major organizational change’, Journal of decision systems17(3/4): 63-78.
38.
Giddens, A. ( 1992) Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge : Polity Press.
39.
Halbwachs, M. ( 1980) Collective memory. New York: Harper.
40.
Hall, S. & Du Gay, P. ( 1996) Questions of cultural identity. London : Sage.
41.
Harré, R. & Gillett, G. ( 1994) The discursive mind. London: Sage.
42.
Heckscher, C. & Adler, P. ( 2007) The Firm as a collaborative community: reconstructing trust in the knowledge economy. Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press.
43.
Heidegger, M. ( 1971) Poetry, language, thought. New York : Harper & Row.
44.
Hernes, T. ( 2004) The spatial construction of organization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
45.
Kallinikos, J. ( 2006) The consequences of information. London : Edward Elgar.
46.
Kearney, R. ( 2002) On stories. London: Routledge.
47.
Kostera, M., ed. (2008) Organizational epics and sagas. Basingstoke: Palgrave .
48.
Knorr-Cetina, K. ( 1997) ‘Sociality with objects: social relations in post-social knowledge societies’, Theory, culture & society14(4): 1-30.
49.
Knorr-Cetina, K. & Brugger, U. ( 2002) ‘Traders’ engagement with markets: a postsocial relationship’, Theory, culture & society19(5/6): 161-85.
50.
Lash, S. & Urry, J. ( 2002) Economies of signs and space. London : Sage.
51.
Laszlo, J. ( 2008) The science of stories. London: Routledge.
52.
Marris, P. ( 1993) ‘The social construction of uncertainty’, in C. Murray Parkes, J. Stevenson-Hinde & P. Marris (eds) Attachment across the life cycle, pp 78-90. London: Routledge.
53.
Martin, J. ( 2002) Organizational culture: mapping the terrain. London: Sage.
54.
Murray Parkes, C., Stevenson-Hinde, J. & Marris, P. ( 1993) Attachment across the life cycle. London: Routledge.
55.
Newell, S., Robertson, M., Scarbrough, H. & Swan, J. ( 2002) Managing knowledge work. London: Palgrave.
56.
Pennebaker, J.W. ( 1992) ‘Creacion y mantenimiento de memorias colectivas’ , Revista de psicologia politica7: 125-45.
57.
Pennebaker, J. ( 2003) ‘Psychological aspects of natural language use: our words, our selves’, Annual review of psychology54: 547-77.
58.
Putnam, R. ( 2000) Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community . New York: Simon & Schuster .
59.
Rheingold, H. ( 1998) The community of the future. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
60.
Ricœur, P. ( 1980) ‘Narrative time’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.) On narrative, pp. 25-39. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.
61.
Robert, F. ( 1998) ‘The heritage of story-telling’, Maclean’s111(44): 80.
62.
Rose, N. ( 1996) ‘Identity, genealogy, history’, in S. Hall & P. Du Gay (eds) Questions of cultural identity, pp. 40-57. London : Sage.
63.
Searle, J.R. ( 1995) The construction of social reality. London: Penguin.
64.
Selwyn, N. ( 2009) ‘Rethinking education in the digital age’ , in N. Prior & K. Orton-Johnson (eds) Rethinking sociology in the digital age, pp. 56-78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
65.
Selznick, P. ( 1992) The moral commonwealth: social theory and the promise of community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
66.
Sennett, R. ( 1998) The corrosion of character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton.
67.
Sennett, R. ( 2006) The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
68.
Shotter, J. ( 1984) Social accountability and selfhood. Oxford: Blackwell.
69.
Tajfel, H. ( 1978) Differentiation between social groups. London: Academic Press.
70.
Tsoukas, H. ( 2006) Complex knowledge: studies in organizational epistemology . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
71.
Tsoukas, H. & Chia, R. ( 2002) ‘On organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change’, Organization science13(5): 567-82.
72.
Vaara, E. ( 2002) ‘On the discursive construction of success/failure in narratives of post-merger integration’, Organization studies23(2): 211-48.
73.
Walsh, J.P. & Rivera-Ungson, G. ( 1991) ‘Organizational memory’, Academy of management review16(1): 57-91.
74.
Weick, K. ( 1979) The social psychology of organizing. London: Sage.
75.
Weick, K. ( 1995) Sense-making in organizations. London : Sage.
76.
Weick, K., Sutcliffe, K.M. & Obstfeld, D. ( 2005) ‘Organizing and the process of sense-making’ , Organization science16(4): 409-21.
77.
Winnicott, D. ( 1971) Playing and reality. London: Tavistock/Routledge .
78.
Wittel, A. ( 2001) ‘Toward a network sociality’, Theory, culture & society18(6): 51-76.
79.
Zuboff, S. ( 1988) In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
