Storytelling Consulting Seminar Boje

INSTRUCTOR: David M. Boje 532-1693 Call between 9 AM and 8 PM; Office BC 318 email doje@nmsu.edu

OFFICE HOURS: Mon 12:30 PM to 2:20 PM - Frenger Food Court (by Dynasty, at a table); or Please call for appointment

MEETS: Our Dialogic Story Polyphony meets Wednesday in Spring 2008; 2:30 to 5PM in BC 247.

IMPORTANT DATES: Classes begin Jan 16 2008; Holiday Mar 21; Spring Break Mar 24-28; Sc'Moi Conference (Mar 26-29); Exam Week May 5-9

SYLLABUS 685.1 Story Research and Consulting to Organizations. We apply various qualitative story and narrative research methods (plot analysis, script analysis, life history, and restorying) to action research projects. Students will conduct story noticingassessments and (proposed or enact) interventions with a local consenting organization. They will write it up for possible publication.

Open to all Ph.D. students; and to any masters student (by permission of instructor). Contact David Boje for more information. Ph.D. students from Education, English, and several other disciplines besides Business have expressed interest in a course that is about story research as well as about how to use story in organizational change and development work. All are all welcome!

Boje, D. M. (2007) Story Consulting Textbook. On line version is updated daily so download new version of chapters just before class to be sure you are current

Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London: Sage. If not in bookstore, Order from Amazon Has basic analyses such as deconstruction, theme analysis, grand narrative, plot, story network, etc. and introduces concept of antenarrative. Antenarrative is a bet and a pre-story that can aspire to be very transformative. I will teach you the geneaological method, which is not in this book.

Boje, D. M. (2008). Storytelling Organization. London: Sage (forthcoming, consult Amazon). This is a working copy of the book. I am writing it and revising it for publication as the term proceeds. Ask instructor for password to get to book chapters. We will only focus on particular chapters most relevant to story consulting. Please look at it each week for changes, since I am doing revisions daily. Available online for Free until published. See http://storytellingorganization.com click book and enter password -- (given on first day of class)

I will not select to many at the getgo. I want to stylize the choices according to your background and aspirations. I will change the list as we go forward. I have some starters wMon and Wed 1:30 to 3:30 BC 318hich are listed in the schedule. Please come to class prepared, having done notes on each reading, ready to discuss fine points. You will see that small assignments prepare you for getting into the field, collcting stories, doing your restory work with the client, and writing up publishable findings. I will help you each step of the way.

Schedule for Semester
Jan 16 08 Week 1 First Class --> Guest will be artist, Virginia Maria Romero What is STORY RESEARCH? o Read the Introduction chapter in Narrative Methods book to get understanding of antenarrative Read on line course book, Introduction: WHAT IS STORY CONSULTING? Optional: o See video Story of Stuff http://storyofstuff.com/ o Intro to Story Noticing - Bill Viola Getty Museum Video o Intro to Story Fractals - Trippy Fractal Video o Improv Everywhere Home Depot Video o Ch 1 What are 2 Kinds of Story Consulting Story Consulting Book o Handouts: Walter Benjamin's classic 1936 eassy, Storyteller Assignment for next week: Pick an organization (any kind, but with some longevity) - come to class with a scrapbook of its visual storytelling, any public text, any semblances of founding story, DO NARRATIVE NOTICING as dialectic to STORY NOTICING
Jan 22 08 Week 2 Have read by today Walter Benjamin classic essay on Storyteller o Boje, D. M. 1991. "The storytelling organization: A study of storytelling performance in an office supply firm." Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 36: pp.106-126. Optional: Ch 2 What is Geneaological Method? SC Book o See Narrative Method chapter on Microstoria o Intro to Storytelling Organization: What are 8 types of sensemaking story? o For Marketing students: How is Understanding an Advertisement Possible? by Trevor Pateman -- Essay uses Roland Barthes appraoch to narrative Assignment for next week: Enter the public debate on the relation of Narrative to Story. Go to my Wikipedia (Sjuzhet/Fabula) or story or narrative or similar entry and make an improvement in grammar, style, content, perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjuzhet
Jan 29 08 Week 3 o Ch 1 Narrative Methods - Deconstruction o Jacques Derrida 1979 essay, Living On: Border Lines Optional: o Ch 3 What is Practical Storytelling Consulting SC Book o Ch 9 Developing Organizations Storytelling Org Book o Why I do not assign managerialist story consulting books? Boje, D. M. 2006a. Pitfalls in Storytelling Advice and Praxis. Academy of Management Review, Vol 31 (1): 218-224)..This is a review of six storytelling consulting books, and consulting practices. Issues are raises and opportunities for future research. Click here
Feb 6 08 Week 4 o Chap 3 from volosinov book Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1930/1973) pp. 125-140. Optional: o Ch 4 Why do Storytelling Organizations Crave Story Control? SC Book o What is the dark side of Knwledge Management Story Consulting? Boje, D. M. 2006d. The Dark Side of Knowledge Reengineering Meets Narrative/Story. Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society. Click here for pre-publication pdf.
Feb 13 08 Week 5 o Loma Del Poleo o Narrative Methods book, ch 3, Microstoria ASSIGNMENT: Turn in Title and abstract for your term project Optional: o Ch 5 What is Mythmaking in Story Consulting? SC Book o What is antenarrative? Boje, D. M. forthcoming. The Antenarrative Cultural Turn in Narrative Studies. To appear in book edited by Mark Zachry & Charlotte Thralls The Cultural Turn Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing View pre-publication PFD
Feb 20 08 Week 6 o Mediciene Wheel working paper by Gerrie McCollough o Chap 5 Semiology from Visual Methods book (Gillian Rose) ASSIGNMENT: Turn in an outline listing the various parts of your article Optional: o Ch 6 What is Mythmaking in Story Consulting
27 Feb 08 Week 7 o Boje, D. M. 1995. "Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-land'" Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 38 (4): 997-1035. o Gabriel chapter from 2004 book - handout ASSIGNMENT: Turn in 1 to 2 pages on contribution you see your article making to the field; a paragraph laying out the major sections of your article Optional: o Ch 7 What Story Consultants Need to Know About Collective Memory?
5 Mar 08 Week 8 o Article handout: The Economic Value of Advertising o Article handout: When consumers and brands talk o handout - Pollay, Richard W. 1986. The distorted mirror: Reflections on the unintended consequences of advertising. JOurnal of Marketing. Vol 50 ( April): pp. 18-36. Assignment: Turn in about 3 to 5 pages of literature review for your article. Please be critical instead of just summarizing existing theory Optional: o Ch 8 How to Write Strategy Story?
12 Mar 08 Week 9 o Ch 4 Content Analysis form the Gillian Rose book on Visual Analysis o handout - Barton, Ben F., & Barton, Marthalee S. (1993). Ideology and the map: Toward a postmodern visual design practice. In Nancy Roundy Blyler & Charlotte Thralls (Eds.), Professional communication: The social perspective (pp. 49-78). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. o Intertextuality chapter from Boje book on Narrative Methods Assignment: Turn in methodology section (2 to 3 pages) of your study. o CH 9: WHAT IS HOLOGRAPHIC STORY CONSULTING? Submit the literature review of your article
19 Mar 08 Week 10 o Homi Bhaba Boba article provided by Gerri o John Shotter's critique of Jerome Bruner's work (that its not dialogic) Optional: o CH 10: HOW DOES STORY CONSULTING RELATE TO MARKETING?
Spring Break Mar 24 to Mar 28 08 Week 11 http://scmoi.org -- time off for class to finish up article draft
2 Apr 08 Week 12 ' Assignment: Turn in the first part of your analysis section of your study o CH 11: WHAT STORY CONSULTNANTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STORYABILITY AND COMPLEXITY?
9 Apr 08 Week 13 Assignment:: 2nd part of your analysis section o CH 12: WHAT STORY CONSULTING NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT POWER TOOLS?
16 Apr 08 Week 14 o CH 13: WHAT STORY CONSULTING NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL THEORY? Assignmnet: Turn in the implications and conclusion section of your article Work on drafting your article
23 Apr 08 Week 15 o CH 14: WHAT STORY CONSULTANTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ‘L-WORD’? Make final revisions before final presentation next week & Submit first draft of your conulting research paper, in the format of the journal you are submitting to, complete with abstrat, intro, lit review, method, findings, implications, conclusion, references, and name of journal you will submit it to
Final presentation of your 2nd draft of consulting project papers will be done during exam week - BC 247 1:00-3:00 (NEW TIME) on Wed

1) Students completing the course will have a mastery of several story research approaches to studying story behaviors. I can include the use of N-Vivo text analysis software. But, I much prefer scrapbooking, deconstruction, and intertextuality without it. Choice of methods depends upon the field sites selected. Students will be able to collect story fragments in ethnographic field work, in documents, and in the non-verbal and non-text expressivity of art and architecture as well as the gesture and rhythm of story theatrics. Story behavior research and consulting is not about doing interviews or making collections of organization folktales, or narrative archetypes. Students completing the course will be able to collect and analyze field notes and recordings of story behaviors.

2) Students will conduct field research (&/or consulting) on a New Mexico, long-lived "storytelling organization" using geneaology research methods. It gets at the more epic aspect of storytelling. Epic looks at the systemicity of story behaviors, in their emergent, on-going in situ processes. Managerialist story consulting, on the other hand, imposes a cohesive-narrative-beginning, middle, end-dogma onto story that I call BME (see Storytelling Organization book). For narrativists story must have coherence: beginning, middle & end (BME); be linear in its development, and be monophonic (told by one informant in the manner that management prescribes). Epic story consulting addresses the entire storytelling organization as a collective constellation, in all its dialogisms (polyphonic, stylistic, chronotopic, & architectonic), that is ever-changing and rearranging in emergent complexity.

3) We will work on some things as a class; Students will conduct an "storytelling organization" intervention consulting project on a long-lived New Mexico organization. Students may work in teams, but each person must write their own individual independent sections of a project. a different kind of project that does not involve a specific site: story consultant Gabriel Gargiulo has asked for students to operationalize his story model using metrics; and other projects students suggest.

4) Ph.D. students are expected to produce a publishable-quality journal article for submission to one of the journals that focuses upon story research and/or story consulting practice in their chosen discipline. They are expected to submit it first to some conference, such as http://scmoi.org, critical management studies in UK, Academy of Management, etc. Masters students are expected to produce a professional consultation report detailing story behaviors observed, and appending field notes and other documentation. Masters students are expected to do less reading than Ph.D. students.

5) Students learn the ethics of story consulting practice and research. This includes folling New Mexico State University IRB Human Subjects procedures. Please have anyone doing interviews fill out the following consent form. Please review any material with the client that you intend to appear in any king of conference paper or publication. Click here for IRB Approved Consent Form (Feb 2007; renewed Jan 08). Please have interviewees complete a Confidentiality Form (copy to be stored in Boje's office, BC 318; give copy to interviewee)

Our seminar will include methodologies for story research (deconstruction, theme analysis, grand narrative, plot analysis, etc.); will also include story intervention approaches such as “restorying” (defined as collecting the dominant (oppressive) stories of the organization that set up its posture and power, and then intervening to constitute a new story that has liberatory potential (White & Epston, 1990). Storytelling consulting to organizations is a blossoming field (about 50 books on it at Amazon.com). Most of these story consulting approaches are pretty naive, with advice like teach CEO to tell a stump speech story, and somehow that will change the organization (Boje, 2005f).

About your Instructor: Professor David Boje is an internationally-acknowledge expert in organization story research. He has published over 60 referred journal articles, written a book in narrative method, and has book contracts under review with Sage and Wiley publishers for follow-on book projects. He has just completed chapters on story research for two scholarly handbooks, and a review of the story praxis books for Academy of Management Review (Boje, 2005a, b, c, e, f). One of his first tier-one journal articles was in Administrative Science Quarterly (1991) which was a consulting project to an office supply firm. Kaye (1996) developed a highly successful storytelling organization consulting practice down under with the approach. Boje teaches classes in small business consulting (Mgt448/548) using theatrics of storytelling and Socio-Economic approaches (Boje & Rosile, 2003, b, c).

GENERAL SYLLABUS POLICY

?E Incompletes ("I" grades): Given for passable work that could not be completed due to circumstances beyond the student's control (e.g., severe illness, death in the immediate family). These circumstances must have developed after the last day to withdraw from the course. Requests for "I" grades should be made to the instructor, but must be approved by the Management Department Head.

?E Withdrawals: It is the responsibility of the student to know important dates such as University drop dates; last day to withdraw with a W is March 16. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the student to officially withdraw from any class that he or she intends to drop.

?E Cheating: Cheating will not be tolerated. Punishment for those caught cheating will be an ?gF?h in the course. The person will also be subject to further sanctions as indicated in the student code of conduct.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: If you have (or believe you have) a disability & would benefit from classroom accommodation(s), contact the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at Corbett Center , Room 244 (Phone 646-6840; TTY 646-1918). All medical info is treated confidentially. Do not wait until you receive a failing grade. Retroactive accommodations cannot be considered. Information, instructions & forms from the Services for Students with Disabilities Office are online at http://www.nmsu.edu/~ssd/index.html. Accommodations: SSD Office, 646-6840 ( Corbett Center , room 244); Discrimination: Office for Institutional Equity, 646-3635, O?fLoughlin House.

Student Responsibilities

1. Within a few days of the start of the semester, register with SSD & obtain forms.

2. Within the first 2 weeks of beginning of classes (or within 1 week of the date services are to commence), deliver the completed forms to the instructor(s).

3. Within 5 days of giving the forms to faculty & at least 1 week before any scheduled exam, retrieve the signed forms from faculty & return them to SSD.

4. Contact the SSD Office if services/accommodations requested are not being provided, not meeting your needs, or additional accommodations are needed.

Faculty Responsibilities

1. Within five 5 working days after student gives you the forms, sign them, retain a copy, & return originals to the student.

2. Contact SSD immediately if there are any questions or disputes regarding accommodation(s), disruptive behavior, etc.

3. Refer the student to SSD for any additional accommodations.

Mgt 685 Seminar in Story Research & Consulting