Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research

by David M. Boje

An essential guide for academics and researchers needing to look at alternative discourse analysis strategies. As a research tool, narrative methods have become increasingly useful in organization studies, where much research involves the interpretation of "stories" in some form. This methodology can be applied where qualitative story analyses can help to assess interview, newspaper or web document stories for research projects.

In this book, Boje sets out eight analysis options that can deal with storytelling, recognizing that stories in organizations can be self-destructing, flowing, networking and not at all static. In so doing, he shows ways in which narrative methods can be supplemented by "anti-narrative" methods, where fragmented and collective storytelling can be interpreted.

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2000

Reviews

[Crosby Cobb]

Listen I read this for school and am putting it on here solely because I’m adding to my 2021 “books read” list. I can be accomplishment driven, kill me!

[path · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the underlying argument compelling and some of the strategies for troubling and resisting hegemonic narratives to be useful. However, I could not escape thinking that antenarrative was more often presented as something just beyond reach, never the thing we are talking about but always the thing we are not talking about. I suppose that this disorientation is part of the point: antenarrative is a tension that is a counter-balance to totalizing narratives that seek closure and the kind of traditional meaning that I am accustomed to seeing. Perhaps the reason that the conclusions seem incomplete is that the book is subverting the expectation that we create knowledge by arriving at a tidy, succinct conclusion with clearly-delineated boundaries. Knowledge arrived at through antenarrative is always situated and in progress.