Narrow Results

How can we be better to implement and create commitment for sustainable changes in (for instance) municipalities, help start ups create stronger teams and also possess complexity as a leader or consultant without getting stress and burn-out? This chapter explores how we can use storytelling to create a commitment to sustainable and ethical changes, and to navigate situations of high complexity. We believe the change-management method True Storytelling has some answers. True Storytelling is more than a change-management method, it is a philosophy inspired from indigenous peoples’ storytelling, quantum physics and arts. This text will introduce the seven principles and seven processes of True Storytelling, its theory and some of the tools used in the Foundation Ethics Module at the True Storytelling Institute. After reading the chapter you will have a basic understanding about the concept.

This chapter examines a complexity-inspired model for multilevel analysis of situations. Originally termed relational introspection (Wakefield, 2012), other adaptations include fractal relationality (Boje & Henderson, 2015) and the self–others–situation (SOS) model described herein. I then adapt it for use in open-plan office environments, where workers are able to observe one another’s every move. This adaptation leverages storytelling in the form of a self-narrative, as described by Chang (2016), to explore unfolding patterns of behaviors and perceptions, ultimately adding an emotional intelligence component in the interest of encouraging constructive patterns in settings where one’s own influence may not necessarily take center stage.

We encourage fully enacting grounded theory (GT) to help enable organizational science to make a turn toward relational process ontologies (RPOs). RPOs unify practice and philosophy and enable more positive aspirations for organizational futures. How researchers enact GT has changed over three waves, waves which we explore in depth in terms of theoretical mindset and practice. GT is presently inadequate for the complex theorization RPOs require; therefore, we need a fourth wave of GT. Using an RPO of theory-as-historical, we guide the development of a fourth wave of GT. Theory-as-historical sees first- and second-order codes as serving different historical aims, thus second-order codes do not have to build on first-order codes. We discuss the fourth wave GT’s implications for new methods, questions, forms of knowledge, and insights, which enable organizational science to create theories that perform better organizations.