Narrow Results

This paper begins with a review of knowledge management (KM) literature, which highlights the problem that KM is interpreted in many different ways. This is due to the fact that different authors make different assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the nature of knowing. Up until the mid-1990s, knowledge was defined as a "thing". In the late 1990s, there was a call to define knowledge not as a "thing" but as "flows". The theories of Dervin and Snowden belong to the latter school of thought and are reviewed here.

In the British Council, the design of knowledge management projects is informed by theories and research in the discourse of management, communications studies and information science. In particular, the work of Dervin and Snowden has shaped our knowledge management journey. This paper presents a specific example to provide in-depth insight on how we have designed a project debrief workshop that is informed by Dervin's sense-making theory and Snowden's complexity theory.

In studies of revitalizing historical cities, various factors and indicators have received significant attention. There are different theories and perspectives, each addressing specific aspects of the subject. Among these, there exists a holistic perspective. A holistic approach can have an influential impact on sustainable solutions in the revitalization of historic cities. Urban planning, with its tools, can contribute to providing a roadmap in this regard. Theoretical resources and research conducted in this regard have focused on identifying criteria and practical indicators for revitalizing historical areas. An urban planning approach with features such as storytelling and mediation can enhance the sense of place, belonging, and social participation. In urban planning, objective and subjective perspectives can comprehensively examine all factors influencing the rejuvenation of areas, which is effective in planning and managing revitalization projects. On the other hand, examining guidelines and recommendations provided by organizations and authorities such as UNESCO reflects the results and experiences of various global researches. These recommendations are based on principles instrumental in developing a comprehensive understanding of the sustainable revitalization of historic cities. Therefore, this research aims to provide a general and comprehensive overview of historic areas and their sustainable management principles. When dealing with historical cities, the following question arises: What are the general principles of revitalizing them, and what subcategories do they encompass? Studies on this topic show that the general classification of factors and principles of sustainable revitalization in historical cities can be summarized into five categories: history and heritage, economy and society, innovation and creativity, ecosystem and environment, and governance and governments. These principles and their subcategories should be examined and given attention from a functional perspective in four main formats. Some focus on why attention should be given to historical areas (Why?) and how to deal with them (How?). In contrast, others concentrate on the practical operational factors in cities (Who?) and their elements (What?). A descriptive-analytical research method was employed. Data collection was conducted through library research based on a review of relevant literature, documents, and extensive studies related to prominent research in the landscape, landscape perspectives, place identity, sense of place, and their various dimensions. Ultimately, using a qualitative content analysis approach, solutions for regenerating historical contexts from a landscape perspective are presented.

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions can be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model, and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action

This paper argues that higher education in India, especially in the field of humanities and area studies, continues to be a Euro-American inheritance. Even when area studies attempt to offer a critique of the post-Enlightenment construction of universal human nature by locating the human in diverse cultural specificities, the discipline is still unable to configure the ‘context’ outside conceptual boundaries of the West. For instance, studies of culture seem to take historical narrativity as a cultural universal. That is to say, even when cultures do not privilege clear-cut notions of history or philosophy, the assumption is that it should be possible to unravel the historical or philosophical impulses of these cultures by studying the kind of narratives that the cultures have produced. The primacy of the narrative as the life-giving and meaning-making source in an essentially chaotic world is grounded, it seems to me, in Western onto-theology. This narrative model is incapable of studying mnemocultures (cultures of memory) like India (and Asia), for even when the culture produces diverse and heterogenous narrative weaves like itihasa, purana and kavya, the narrative does not enjoy a privileged status in these cultural forms. These compositions have a performative significance whose meaning is not found or guided by presence of the narrative or its potential for truth and identity. This paper will show that positivist historiographic assumptions regarding cultural forms in the non-West, especially in the Indian context, are ill-equipped to engage with traditions that lie outside the heritage of the West. Such attempts to situate an ancient past as embodied in cultural forms extraneous to the Western metaphysic are really accounts of self-understanding of the latter. The receptions of Keralamahatmyam purana in modern intellectual discourses set against the existence of the purana in living traditions of performance outside the confines of the university will be used as a case in point to elucidate the incapability of existing conceptual categories in the humanities discourse to configure cultural difference.

This chapter explores the politics of entrepreneurship in the bioeconomy. It explains how storytelling is used politically to promote certain kinds of entrepreneurship. The chapter questions the idea of the lone entrepreneur, who, armed with creativity, action, and risk-taking creates something new in spite of public bureaucratic structures. Instead, it shows how the bioeconomy is a step in governments’ attempts to encourage and conduct in a subtle way the transformation from an economy based on fossil fuels toward an economy based on sustainable energy sources — in this case, biogas. The chapter also discloses how farmers position themselves and enact their agendas when becoming entrepreneurs in this area. We discuss this case of business storytelling as an example of the relationship between power and entrepreneurship. The reason why biogas is particularly interesting is because of the powerful business interests in farming. Entrepreneurship is in this case used as a tool to revitalize existing power relations and their material interests rather than to create new beginnings.

This chapter is a layered account triographic examination of the sharing economy, specifically Airbnb, in Europe and the former Soviet Union. The three perspectives provided through vignettes provide three distinct contributions. The academician voice illustrates how the rise of the sharing economy supports radical process theory and the use of kairological time to question notions of the extended self. The host voice illustrates the emotional and performative transformations that lead the second author to become a user and host of Airbnb throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union. The other voices acquired during interviews illustrate additional insight into the plagues and pleasures of the sharing economy and the diverse reasons of why individuals are motivated to participate in Airbnb. Together, these voices illustrate how the sharing economy challenges conventional notions of property in contemporary society. Possessions no longer serve as the exclusive domain of the owner. Airbnb as a platform becomes the coordinator for the use of possessions, rendering property subject to mutually negotiated use between the Airbnb platform, the guests, and hosts. This manuscript is of use to practitioners and academicians alike who wish to better understand the novelty and obstacles of the sharing economy.

This article employs an autoethnographic approach to communicate a singular story of entrepreneurship that was started in the mid-1990s. The resulting formation was a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the disadvantaged to acquire the necessary soft skills, the absence of which significantly contributed to their impedance to accessing work opportunities in the marketplace. The focus of this chapter is primarily upon the motivation, initiation, and implementation processes of the founder who insists that the advent of Just People, Inc. originated from the biblical metanarrative and was enhanced by a specific biblical micronarrative. The proposition is that the power of story calls into existence the collective enterprise resources from the unseen realm into the material, seen realm. The main contribution of this chapter is connecting the metaphysical with the physical world that bears positive impact on intended beneficiaries of entrepreneurial activities.

This chapter begins with a discussion of pluralism by focusing on the differences between civic and theological pluralism. A special subset of civic pluralism from Eboo Patel is introduced with three core concepts: respect for identity, relationships with different communities, and a commitment to the common good.This understanding of civic pluralism, combined with social capital forms the theoretical basis for a public narrative analysis of Patel’s founding of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), which is designed to bring people together, despite having different religious views.The creation of the IFYC is an act of social entrepreneurship but also one of narrative entrepreneurship that bridges the gap between competing institutional narratives.The chapter ends with a call for action for the practical action of equipping college students, faculty, and staff to be interfaith leaders who, in turn, impact the national community, as well as the more abstract and broad action of bringing America together around a “civil religion.”

Using the case of an emerging cool-climate wine region, we theorize the processes by which organizational stories of young wineries impact the understanding of place within a rural landscape. The use of regional history in combination with elements of a more global history (fine-wine traditions) in marketing communications — both for the winery and for its products — serves as the genesis of place-making. First, the historical stories used by wineries serve to emplace them as naturalized regional actors. Once localized, the stories then work as antenarratives which are taken up by other actors. When these stories are taken up by other regional actors in the sector, it simultaneously establishes a narrative space and an actor network. The circulation of these stories and antenarratives eventually become the foundation for the creation of a wine sector and the establishment of a (re)new(ed) sense of place grounded in the notion of fine wine.

We explore the ways that antenarratives about antebusinesses obscure a sense of history — but give a clear sense of telos (i.e., progress) — at Canada’s most famously entrepreneurial university. Specifically, we show how entrepreneurship educators, developers, and other narrators-of-place make rhetorical use of stories that have beginnings and middles but no clear endings or resolutions. This leaves the audience to infer future possibilities, even for stories that are drawn from the past. We use this case to consider why entrepreneurial communities might privilege poetics over histories — i.e., telling prospective antenarratives rather than retrospective historical narratives. We consider how entrepreneurial narrative could be rhetorically abstracted from linear time and how it could be positioned “within” rhythmically nonlinear temporal experiences. Consistent with the University of Waterloo’s current brand identity, we get the sense that the campus is “Beyond” history.

In this chapter, I discuss how expats working in Egypt strive to transition towards cosmopolitan selfhood by narrating their encounters with local others in enthusiastic terms. Leaning on theories by Ahmed, Butler and Spivak, I argue that by “knowing through others” expats self-transform, thereby approaching desirable selfhood and becoming professionally versatile. Their knowledge of/through otherhood enables them to maintain a position of knowingness from which relations with others are re-storied in ideologically updated terms. On organizational levels, expatriate stories aggregate into a business storytelling of egalitarianism and cultural sensitivity, heralding the inclusion of local others. This manifested inclusion simultaneously conceals that the presence of others is “partial,” narrative rather than epistemological, as westerners continue to be constituted as those who “know” and define boundaries for what knowledge others may have.

Storytelling in leadership research is usually approached positively and seen as a non-problematic resource or even a “tool” for leadership purposes. However, using stories and narratives involves challenges for leaders. Storytelling may result in intended outcomes, but it also carries a risk for undesirable leadership consequences. In the storytelling approach, there is a hidden assumption that listeners are homogeneous and that they are not critical or active. Empirical studies rarely approach failed storytelling experienced by leaders: the feelings of failure, reasons, and consequences. In this chapter, we focus on the risky nature of leadership storytelling as well as the element of learning to be a better leader inherent in it. Based on empirical qualitative data, we apply thematic and content analysis on interviews from 13 leaders. Based on the findings, we present the following five special dimensions/themes of failure, illustrating the risks involved in leadership storytelling: (a) diversity of the audience, (b) situation/context, (c) loss of authority, (d) storytelling skills, and (e) audience misinterpretation. We interpret the findings in the context of the leaders’ personal experiences, their meaning for the leaders’ self-reflection, and the leaders’ leadership learning for the future. Moreover, we discuss these dimensions from the perspective of diversity and the hidden assumption in the storytelling approach that the listeners are a homogeneous group.

The objective of this chapter is to show the commonalities between the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) created by Henri Savall and the ISEOR research center and the approach to storytelling developed by David Boje and his colleagues. The chapter highlights the need to enhance awareness of fragments of discourse, dysfunctions, and hidden costs. It also shows how to implement ante-narrative processes and rebuild the strategic bedrock of companies through socio-economic management tools and processes.

True Storytelling is arguably one of the best examples of the postmodern narrative because it bonds the writer with the reader. It creates a sense of intellectual adventure that allows the reader to take the writer’s intention and apply it for his or her own ways and reasons. True Storytelling outlines seven principles, which will be elaborated upon. What is missing is how a researcher can effectively use true storytelling. In other words, what methodology supports a blend of story and theory to honor True Storytelling? This work will introduce the layered account autoethnography as a technique that supports each of the Seven Principles of True Storytelling. Following the introduction, there will be a discussion of the pitfalls of Cartesian–Newtonian dualism, and how storytelling bridges this divide. After this initial review, I will define True Storytelling and autoethnography and show how I came to appreciate their relationship. Following this discussion, each of the Seven Principles of True Storytelling will be paired with examples of published autoethnographies.

The fulfillment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is very much an issue about resources: How are resources articulated, created, and utilized? What is considered a resource, what exists in abundance, what is scarce, and when does something cease to be a resource? In our contribution, we address these issues with a focus on seaweed. By analyzing stories from environmental planners and ecopreneurs about seaweed, we demonstrate the phenomenon called resourcification — the social process that makes something a resource. From the stories, we illustrate the contexts of the resourcification and de-resourcification of seaweed. This allows us to show how resources, such as seaweed, are socially produced and become part of life. To conclude, we suggest that resourcification provides a provisional sustainability storyline suitable for working toward the SDGs in the Anthropocene.

This chapter explores the use of critical design and storytelling as tools to motivate a person to choose a more sustainable path and change one’s mindset to consumption and nature. The chapter draws on the epistemological notion of lived experience, arguing that people act as a result of their direct experience and that experience is always lived. Furthermore, it is the guiding principle for this chapter that knowledge without emotion lacks intensity and emotion with-out knowledge lacks direction. As long as we consume products as we currently do, this perspective is relevant because it addresses the transformative force in storytelling and product design. The chapter highlights how industrialized production ideals, such as standardization and precision, alienate the consumer from the production and the product and thereby from the product’s inherent footprint. The chapter starts as a philosophical discussion, connecting concepts of storytelling, self-narrative, and industrial design to address the contemporary challenges posted by the current climate crises. The second part of the chapter zooms in and presents a radical design case, Bee’otopia, that explores how designs can help us fundamentally rethink our relationship to design, nature, and ourselves. The case explores whether a production collaborating with bees can help us rethink our relationship to design, nature, and ourselves. In this case, lamp shades are manufactured in collaboration with bees leaving no waste but honey and pollinated flowers. This fundamentally reframes our relationship to nature and products — by consuming products you can positively impact our world and thereby enforcing a sustainable world of consumption. The final part of the chapter zooms out again and invites the reader to discuss worldmaking and storytelling as essential tools to boost intensities in climatic storytelling that will consequentially help change our present unsustainable alienated approach to nature and product consumption and product lifetime.

We investigate how citizens engage in storytelling on social media. We look at how citizens’ stories about a city’s industrial past are brought forward in a Facebook group. Institutional storytelling neglects parts of the city’s industrial area. We track how users establish a co-created counternarrative by means of sharing fragmented memories (posts) and how this narrative rests in parallel to the institutionalized narrative. Employing a case study approach, we applied a variety of qualitative methods, such as qualitative interviews and participant observation, as a means to investigate social media as a digital space for keeping memories alive. Consequently, we conducted a thematic narrative analysis of the data. Citizens use social media to tell their stories and share memories, and they value the opportunity to do so as provided by the Internet: First, users reminisce experiences connected to blue-collar work and the industrial past. Second, users acknowledge the benefits of post-industrial changes (e.g., less pollution) without devaluating the nostalgia. Third, users wish for the industrial past being included in institutional storytelling. Finally, the Facebook group is a space to vent about perceived conflicts of identity, here the elite, as included in the institutionalized narrative, and the working class, as glossed over. Our study provided theoretical insights on the notion of counternarratives, which get collected coherently when shared in a virtual space. These web-mediated narratives run parallel to institutionalized master narratives. In practice, governing bodies might benefit from these insights into class consciousness and storytelling and include citizens’ narratives in strategic communication.