Organizational Storytelling, Ethics and Morality: How Stories Frame Limits of Behavior in Organizations
EJBO Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies
Vol. 10, No. 2 (2005)
Organizational Storytelling, Ethics and Morality: How Stories Frame Limits of Behavior in Organizations
By: Michael S. Poulton
Abstract
In this article it is argued that codes of conduct may be a starting point in examining the ethics of a business organization, but a deeper understanding of the ethics and morality of a firm may be found in the stories that circulate from employee to employee and, more specifically, from one generation of employees to another. The search for the basis of a firm’s stance on how employees should implicitly respond to both external and internal conflicts should begin with determining the “genesis” story of the firm, the primary organizational metaphor that is derived from that narrative, and how both the master narrative and metaphor frame employees’ organizational self-perception and their responses and subsequent actions in dealing with internal and external conflict.
Stories are food for the ‘epistemic’ hunger of our species. This metaphor is, however, obviously incompatible with the notion of ‘perfect fulfillment.’ Just as we cannot be ever satisfied with a single meal, or even multiples ones, even if they are absolute gourmet delights, but have to keep eating at regular intervals all our lives, so we cannot ever be fulfilled by binges of narrative activity. (Rukmini Bhaya Nair in Narrative Gravity) This paper will integrate theories of organizational storytelling and its role in forming a firm’s morals and ethics, how an organizational “genesis” narrative and subsequent organizational metaphor develop, and then how these two frame the organization’s ethic and moral responses to ambiguous situations.
I. Ethics in the business context
Ethics can be approached from a variety of directions: descriptive ethics –non-judgmental explanation of the ethical framework of societies or large institutions in a society; normative ethics –
Vol. 10, No. 2 (2005)
Organizational Storytelling, Ethics and Morality: How Stories Frame Limits of Behavior in Organizations
By: Michael S. Poulton
Abstract
In this article it is argued that codes of conduct may be a starting point in examining the ethics of a business organization, but a deeper understanding of the ethics and morality of a firm may be found in the stories that circulate from employee to employee and, more specifically, from one generation of employees to another. The search for the basis of a firm’s stance on how employees should implicitly respond to both external and internal conflicts should begin with determining the “genesis” story of the firm, the primary organizational metaphor that is derived from that narrative, and how both the master narrative and metaphor frame employees’ organizational self-perception and their responses and subsequent actions in dealing with internal and external conflict.
Stories are food for the ‘epistemic’ hunger of our species. This metaphor is, however, obviously incompatible with the notion of ‘perfect fulfillment.’ Just as we cannot be ever satisfied with a single meal, or even multiples ones, even if they are absolute gourmet delights, but have to keep eating at regular intervals all our lives, so we cannot ever be fulfilled by binges of narrative activity. (Rukmini Bhaya Nair in Narrative Gravity) This paper will integrate theories of organizational storytelling and its role in forming a firm’s morals and ethics, how an organizational “genesis” narrative and subsequent organizational metaphor develop, and then how these two frame the organization’s ethic and moral responses to ambiguous situations.
I. Ethics in the business context
Ethics can be approached from a variety of directions: descriptive ethics –non-judgmental explanation of the ethical framework of societies or large institutions in a society; normative ethics –
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Wilkins, Alan L. (1983) “Organizational Stories as Symbols Which Control the Organization” in Monographs in Organization Behavior and Industrial Relations, Bacharach, Samuel B., ed. (Greenwich: JAI Press, Inc.) p. 81-92 Michael S. Poulton Michael Poulton is an Assistant Professor in the International Studies/International Business and Management Department of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where he teaches courses in Marketing, Comparative Business Ethics, Fundamentals of Business and Senior Seminar. Mr. Poulton spent some twenty years in agribusiness, the last six of which were spent in Russian, Kazakhstan and Ukraine prior to teaching in Switzerland and then Dickinson. 9 http://ejbo.jyu.fi/