MYERS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Sage Publications Limited © 2008 Michael D. Myers All Rights Reserved NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Chapter 16

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Introduction  There are many different ways to analyse qualitative data  Narrative analysis is one approach to analysing and interpreting qualitative data Narrative analysis Written Record Data Analysis Approach Data Collection Technique Research Method Philosophical Assumptions 2

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Narrative  Narrative is defined by the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as a ‘a spoken or written account of connected events; a story’ (Soanes & Stevenson, 2004)  Traditionally, a narrative requires a plot, as well as some coherence. It has some sort of ordered sequence, often in linear form, with a beginning, middle, and end  Narratives also usually have a theme and a main point, or a moral, to the story Narrative analysis3

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Personal and organizational narratives  A narrative can refer to the life history of a person you have interviewed, a story about a significant aspect of their life, or a specific event. A personal narrative might refer to their diaries, journals or letters (Chase, 2005)  Organizational narratives refer to the history or stories about organizations. Organizational narratives are ‘the main mode of knowing and communicating in organizations’ (Czarniawska,1998) Narrative analysis4

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Approaches to narrative analysis  Writing versus reading narrative  Top-down versus bottom-up  Realist, constructivist and critical  Genres (adventure story, fairytale, romance, tragedy...)  Voice (authoritative, supportive, joint voice)  Postmodern narrative and ante-narrative approaches (deconstruction, grand narrative, microstoria...) Narrative analysis5

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT How to use narrative analysis  If you are planning to collect narratives during interviews (and hence narratives will be your main source of data), then you need to work at inviting stories from your informants  If you are planning to write a narrative of an organization, then the typical form in management and organization studies is to write it up as a case study. Case studies usually use chronology as the main organizing device (Czarniawska, 1998)  The Labov/Cortazzi model suggests six elements to every narrative: abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation, result, and conclusion Narrative analysis6

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT Critique of narrative analysis  Narrative analysis is very useful in the creation or critique of organizational narratives. It is an in-depth approach to analyzing qualitative data  Narrative analysis is potentially an excellent way in which we can enter into a dialogue with managers and business people in organizations (Czarniawska, 1998). It is one way of making our research more relevant to practice  One disadvantage is that it can be very time consuming to collect life histories of people, and even more time consuming to analyse them Narrative analysis7