'Reports from the 17th EGOS Colloquium 'The odyssey of organizing', Lyon 5-7 July 2001 - EGOS Notes

Organization Studies, Nov, 2001

Pasquale Gagliardi

Sub-theme 1: 'Narratives We Organize By'

When Barbara Czarniawska and I decided to convene this track, our intention was to gather people interested in exploring the analogy and parallel between organizing and narrating, suggested so convincingly by Ricoeur in relation to action and text. As we said in the Call for Papers '... the raw material of everyday organizational life consists of disconnected fragments, physical and verbal actions that, when reported with simple chronology (for instance, in observation notes), do not make sense. Narrating is organizing this raw and fragmented material with the help of such devices as plot and characters. Simultaneously, organizing makes narration possible, ordering people, things and events in time and place.'

The starting point of our journey was promising: we could select 27 proposals from among more than 50 submitted abstracts, facing the usual problem of having to guess the content of the final papers. We were lucky enough to receive abstracts that promised to explore the analogy between action and text in both directions, reporting studies that show how narratives are made in Situ, or applying the narrative analysis (of various kinds) to stories already in existence. Other proposals promised to pursue the connections between different narratives across time and space, showing the emergence of genres, their transformation or demise. Actually, 24 papers were presented and discussed at the conference, grouped within the different sessions, mainly according to thematic affinities. The seven main themes were: (hi)stories; organizational identity narratives; personal identities in organizations -- embodied narratives; personal identities in organizations -- embedded narratives; shop floor narratives -- tales from th e field of practice; tales from the field of theory; accounts about the future and technology.

The presentations were excellent and often emotionally involving; the discussions were open and passionate. At the end of the conference, it was clear to me (as well as to all the participants, I suppose) that the label 'narrative approach' covers a wide range of perspectives, interests, and epistemological orientations. As Barbara pointed out, traditional organization theory is inclined to treat narratives as transparent. However, they have an ubiquitous presence in contemporary societies, and need to be addressed in their own right, looking for alternatives in linguistics, semiotics, narratology, theory of literature, etc.

We didn't try to form 'conclusions' in our track. What follows is very much a personal reflection, an account of what I have learnt from the whole experience of designing, organizing and participating in this workshop. I have learnt that: (a) narratives from the field are interesting 'data', which deserve to be collected and interpreted; (b) narratives and fictional language can be powerful tools to communicate to our audiences (be they clients or other researchers) what we have understood of organizational life, (c) narrative analysis of organizational action -- that is, treating organizational action as a text -- can help in interpreting organizational phenomena. However, the ultimate purpose and question (of having classified and identified characters, plots, structures, and so on) should always be: Does this sort of analysis extend my field of vision? If the answer is 'no', then we had better turn to other analytical tools.

Sub-theme 2: 'Re-discovering History in Studying Organizations'

Behlul Usdiken

Alfred Kieser

In the good old EGOS tradition this sub-theme brought together participants from 10 different countries and with diverse research interests. Eighteen papers were delivered. Those that were empirical spanned a wide variety of organizations, with notable cases like pubs in Britain and high quality restaurants in France as well as 18th century occupational administrations in what is now Belgium!

Not surprisingly, there was a broad consensus among the papers that organizational analysis needs to 'take history seriously'. The consensus began to break down and things started to become less clear, however, as papers addressed what this might mean and how it was to be achieved. For example, there was a call for a 'historical turn' that would enable a transformation in organization studies, disassociating the enterprise from being viewed as a science of society (Clark and Rowlinson). Others (Leblebici and Shah, Roness, Mutch), on the other hand, focused on the possible connections between history and organizational analysis and how the two fields could talk to one another and to what purpose. A distinction was offered between 'organizational history' and 'historical organization theory' as a way of conceptualizing the intersection (Leblebici and Shah). The former leaned towards historicism as a way of describing and explaining unique events, whereas the latter offered possibilities for 'testing' propositio ns or deriving time-dependent theoretical claims. Then there were questions of methodology, as in the opposition of the narrative in history and the case study tradition in organizational analysis (Clark and Rowlinson), alternative methods (Mutch), and the possibilities of writing organizational histories that allowed for multiple voices (van der Blonk and Grotenhuis).