A bibliometric study of organizational storytelling/narrative research | Intellect Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Journal of Design, Business & Society
  4. Volume 9, Issue 2
  5. Article
Sustainability & Design Research
  • ISSN: 2055-2106
  • E-ISSN: 2055-2114

Abstract

Organizational storytelling/narrative was largely ignored in the academic literature before the 1970s. Today, however, with the spread of ‘storytelling thinking’, this concept has been explored across disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Although much research has emerged in the field of organizational narrative/storytelling, no study has addressed the bibliography of this subject quantitatively. This article is a bibliometric study of organizational storytelling/narration that aims to fill this gap. The data came from the Web of Science (WoS), which includes 441 documents between 1955 and January 2022. VOSviewer software was used to draw charts and create tables. The findings show that most documents have been published in this area in the last two decades, mainly in the United States. This bibliographic study offers two key findings for the field of organization storytelling. First, co-citation analysis provides four clusters, namely Cluster 1: healthcare, Cluster 2: stories of a darker side, Cluster 3: collective centring and collective sensemaking to express organizational culture and Cluster 4: identity and knowledge, shows in which topics the researchers of organizational storytelling/narrative have been most active. Second, co-occurrence analysis presents six clusters, Cluster 1: identification, Cluster 2: systems, Cluster 3: evolution, Cluster 4: performance, Cluster 5: power and Cluster 6: self, which are placed in a logical path related to the maturity levels of the organization and illustrate the topics that correspond to each organizational maturity level. Given the nature of the narrative/story, future researchers are likely to focus more on qualitative analysis and other aspects of quantitative analysis, including citations. Future research should focus on quantitative and qualitative analysis of the existing models of storytelling/narrative.

© 2023 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/dbs_00055_1
2023-10-09
2024-04-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adamson, G., Pine, J., Van Steenhoven, T. and Kroupa, J. (2006), ‘How storytelling can drive strategic change’, Strategy & Leadership, 34:1, pp. 36–41.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Adorisio, A. L. M. (2009), Storytelling in Organizations: From Theory to Empirical Research, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Aiton, N. and Mukherjee, R. A. (2021), ‘Section 1 overview: The importance of stories’, in R. A. S. Mukherjee and N. Aiton (eds), Prevention, Recognition and Management of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, Cham: Springer, pp. 3–7.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Akbari, M., Khodayari, M., Danesh, M., Davari, A. and Padash, H. (2020), ‘A bibliometric study of sustainable technology research’, Cogent Business & Management, 7:1, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2020.1751906.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Ash, S., McMillan, C., Gross, R. G., Cook, P., Morgan, B., Boller, A., Dreyfuss, M., Siderowf, A. and Grossman, M. (2011a), ‘The organization of narrative discourse in Lewy body spectrum disorder’, Brain and Language, 119:1, pp. 30–41.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Ash, S., Xie, S. X., Gross, R. G., Boller, A., Camp, E., Morgan, B. and Grossman, M. (2011b), ‘Organizational deficits in the comprehension and expression of narrative discourse in Lewy body spectrum disorders’, Neurology, 76:9, pp. A647–48.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Ash, S., Xie, S. X., Gross, R. G., Dreyfuss, M., Boller, A., Camp, E., Morgan, B., O’Shea, J. and Grossman, M. (2012), ‘The organization and anatomy of narrative comprehension and expression in Lewy body spectrum disorders’, Neuropsychology, 26:3, pp. 368–84.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Azevedo, S. G., Santos, M. and Antón, J. R. (2019), ‘Supply chain of renewable energy: A bibliometric review approach’, Biomass and Bioenergy, 126, pp. 70–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Bal, M. (1990), ‘The point of narratology’, Poetics Today, 11:4, pp. 727–53.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Ball, P. (2005), ‘Index aims for fair ranking of scientists’, Nature, 436:7054, https://doi.org/10.1038/436900a.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Beigi, M., Callahan, J. and Michaelson, C. (2019), ‘A critical plot twist: Changing characters and foreshadowing the future of organizational storytelling’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 21:4, pp. 447–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Bell, L. A. and Roberts, R. A. (2010), ‘The storytelling project model: A theoretical framework for critical examination of racism through the arts’, Teachers College Record, 112:9, pp. 2295–319.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Bennett, M. B. (1990), Editor Authors of Their Own Lives: Intellectual Autobiographies by Twenty American Sociologists, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Bensaid, E. (2021), ‘Multimodal generative models for storytelling’, doctoral dissertation, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Boje, D. M. (1991), ‘The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 36:1, pp. 106–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Boje, D. M. (1994), ‘Organizational storytelling: The struggles of pre-modern, modern and postmodern organizational learning discourses’, Management Learning, 25:3, pp. 433–61.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Boje, D. M. (1995), ‘Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as “Tamara-Land”’, Academy of Management Journal, 38:4, pp. 997–1035.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Boje, D. M. and Baskin, K. (2011), ‘Our organizations were never disenchanted: Enchantment by design narratives vs enchantment by emergence’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 24:4, pp. 411–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Boje, D. M., Haley, U. C. and Saylors, R. (2016), ‘Antenarratives of organizational change: The microstoria of Burger King’s storytelling in space, time and strategic context’, Human Relations, 69:2, pp. 391–418.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Boje, D. M., Luhman, J. T. and Baack, D. E. (1999), ‘Stories and encounters between storytelling organizations’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 8:4, pp. 340–60.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Boyack, K. W. and Klavans, R. (2010), ‘Co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and direct citation: Which citation approach represents the research front most accurately?’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61:12, pp. 2389–404.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Boyce, M. E. (1990), ‘Story and storytelling in organizational life’, doctoral dissertation, Santa Barbara, CA: The Fielding Institute.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Boyce, M. E. (1995), ‘Collective centring and collective sense-making in the stories and storytelling of one organization’, Organization Studies, 16:1, pp. 107–37.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Boyce, M. E. (1996), ‘Organizational story and storytelling: A critical review’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 9:5, pp. 5–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Bradshaw, K. (2021), ‘Organizational storytelling capability model’, VCHC Conference, online, 4 October, https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/vchc-conference/2021/posters/2/. Accessed 4 October 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Braude, T., Schwartz, I., Schwing, A. and Shamir, A. (2021), ‘Towards coherent visual storytelling with ordered image attention’, arXiv eprints, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2108.02180.
  27. Brown, A. D. (1999), ‘Book review: Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity’, Human Relations, 52:4, pp. 539–44.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Brown, A. D. (2005), ‘Book review: Yiannis Gabriel: Myths, Stories, and Organizations: Premodern Narratives for Our Times’, Organization Studies, 26:9, pp. 1421–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Brown, J. S., Denning, S., Groh, K. and Prusak, L. (2005), Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Callon, M., Courtial, J. P. and Laville, F. (1991), ‘Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemistry’, Scientometrics, 22:1, pp. 155–205.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Castillo-Vergara, M., Alvarez-Marin, A. and Placencio-Hidalgo, D. (2018), ‘A bibliometric analysis of creativity in the field of business economics’, Journal of Business Research, 85, pp. 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.12.011.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Contandriopoulos, D., Lemire, M., Denis, J. L. and Tremblay, É. (2010), ‘Knowledge exchange processes in organizations and policy arenas: A narrative systematic review of the literature’, The Milbank Quarterly, 88:4, pp. 444–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Cunliffe, A. L., Luhman, J. T. and Boje, D. M. (2004), ‘Narrative temporality: Implications for organizational research’, Organization Studies, 25:2, pp. 261–86.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Davtian, A., Shabalina, O., Sadovnikova, N. and Parygin, D. (2021), ‘Cyber-social system as a model of narrative management’, in A. G. Kravets, A. A. Bolshakov and M. Shcherbakov (eds), Society 5.0: Cyberspace for Advanced Human-Centered Society, vol. 333, Cham: Springer, pp. 3–14.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N. and Lim, W. M. (2021), ‘How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines’, Journal of Business Research, 133, pp. 285–96.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Durrance, B. (1997), ‘Stories at work’, Training & Development, 51:2, pp. 25–30.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Engholm, P. (2001), ‘The controversy between modernist and postmodernist views of management science: Is a synergy possible’, The Engelholm Tribune, http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v69n1/06.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Erlach, C. and Müller, M. (2020), Narrative Organizations, Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Farzin Abdehgah, E. (2022), ‘Designing the organizational decision-making model of managers with an emphasis on reducing the role of their spouses (case study: selected private companies in Tehran province)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Tehran: Payame Noor University.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Fetscherin, M. and Usunier, J. C. (2012), ‘Corporate branding: An interdisciplinary literature review’, European Journal of Marketing, 46:5, pp. 733–53.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Fisher, W. R. (1984), ‘Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument’, Communications Monographs, 51:1, pp. 1–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Fleming, D. (2001), ‘Narrative leadership: Using the power of stories’, Strategy & Leadership, 29:4, pp. 34–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Gabriel, Y. (2004), ‘Narratives, stories and texts’, in D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick and L. Putnam (eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 61–78.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Gray, R. (2010), ‘Is accounting for sustainability actually accounting for sustainability … and how would we know? An exploration of narratives of organisations and the planet’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35:1, pp. 47–62.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Grossman, M., Irwin, D. J., Jester, C., Halpin, A., Ash, S., Rascovsky, K., Weintraub, D. and McMillan, C. T. (2017), ‘Narrative organization deficit in Lewy body disorders is related to Alzheimer pathology’, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 11:53, pp. 1–10.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Hardy, C. and Maguire, S. (2010), ‘Discourse, field-configuring events, and change in organizations and institutional fields: Narratives of DDT and the Stockholm Convention’, Academy of Management Journal, 53:6, pp. 1365–92.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Huang, T.-H. K., Ferraro, F., Mostafazadeh, N., Misra, I., Agrawal, A., Devlin, J., Girshick, R., He, X., Kohli, P., Batra, D., Zitnick, C. L., Parikh, D., Vanderwende, L., Galley, M. and Mitchell, M. (2016), ‘Visual storytelling’, in Proceedings of the 2016 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, San Diego, California, USA, June, Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 1233–39, https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N16-1147. Accessed 1 May 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Humphreys, M. and Brown, A. D. (2002), ‘Narratives of organizational identity and identification: A case study of hegemony and resistance’, Organization Studies, 23, pp. 421–47.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Kang, H. S. and Uchikoshi, Y. (2022), ‘Child second language development of English tense and aspect: The role of narrative organization’, Applied Psycholinguistics, 43:4, pp. 785–804.
     [Google Scholar]
  50. Keogh, D. W. (2003), Using Narrative to Develop Healthier More Effective Organizations, doctoral dissertation, Lisle, IL: Benedictine University.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Khamis, A., Khatib, T., Muhammad, N. A. and Ridzuan, R. (2021), ‘A novel research clustering scheme using bibliometric analysis: A case study of global trend in electrical power system load shedding’, Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, Transactions of Electrical Engineering, 45:4, pp. 1239–54.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Labov, W. (1975), ‘Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular’. Foundations of Language, 13:1, pp. 95–118.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Mar, R. A. and Oatley, K. (2008), ‘The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3:3, pp. 173–92.
     [Google Scholar]
  54. Mayer, F. W. (2014), Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  55. McKee, R. and Fryer, B. (2003), ‘Storytelling that moves people’, Harvard Business Review, 81:6, pp. 51–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  56. McQuillan, M. (2009), The Narrative Reader (trans. F. Mohammadi), Tehran: Minooye Kherad.
     [Google Scholar]
  57. Mitroff, I. I. and Kilmann, R. H. (1975), ‘Stories managers tell: A new tool for organizational problem solving’, Management Review, 64:7, pp. 18–28.
     [Google Scholar]
  58. Molinillo, S., Ekinci, Y., Whyatt, G., Occhiocupo, N. and Stone, M. (2016), ‘Private label management: Insights and research directions’, in M. Gómez-Suárez and M. P. Martínez-Ruiz (eds), Handbook of Research on Strategic Retailing of Private Label Products in a Recovering Economy, Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 1–27.
     [Google Scholar]
  59. Morgan, S. W. and Dennehy, R. F. (1995), ‘Organizational storytelling: Telling tales in the business classroom’, Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 22, pp. 160–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  60. Mumby, D. K. (1987), ‘The political function of narrative in organizations’, Communications Monographs, 54:2, pp. 113–27.
     [Google Scholar]
  61. Musacchio Adorisio, A. L. (2008), ‘Living among stories: Everyday life at a South Western bank’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21:5, pp. 610–21.
     [Google Scholar]
  62. Nijhof, A. D. and Willems, R. M. (2015), ‘Simulating fiction: Individual differences in literature comprehension revealed with fMRI’, PLoS One, 10:2, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116492.
     [Google Scholar]
  63. Parkin, M. (2004), Tales for Change: Using Storytelling to Develop People and Organizations, London: Kogan Page.
     [Google Scholar]
  64. Paliichuk, E. O. (2021), Survival Storytelling in Anti-Trafficking Social Campaigns, Riga: Baltija Publishing.
     [Google Scholar]
  65. Patriotta, G. (2003), ‘Sensemaking on the shop floor: Narratives of knowledge in organizations’, Journal of Management Studies, 40:2, pp. 349–75.
     [Google Scholar]
  66. Pike, S. and Page, S. J. (2014), ‘Destination marketing organizations and destination marketing: A narrative analysis of the literature’, Tourism Management, 41, pp. 202–27.
     [Google Scholar]
  67. Porteous, J., Ferreira, J. F., Lindsay, A. and Cavazza, M. (2021), ‘Automated narrative planning model extension’, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 35:2, pp. 1–29.
     [Google Scholar]
  68. Porter Abbott, H. ([2008] 2018), The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (trans. R. Poorazar and N. Ashrafi), Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  69. Rhodes, C. and Brown, A. D. (2005a), ‘Narrative, organizations and research’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 7:3, pp. 167–88.
     [Google Scholar]
  70. Rhodes, C. and Brown, A. D. (2005b), ‘Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies’, Organization, 12:4, pp. 467–91.
     [Google Scholar]
  71. Riessman, C. K. (1993), Narrative Analysis, Qualitative Research Methods, London: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  72. Riessman, C. K. (2003), Narrative Analysis, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  73. Rosile, G. A., Boje, D. M., Carlon, D. M., Downs, A. and Saylors, R. (2013), ‘Storytelling diamond: An antenarrative integration of the six facets of storytelling in organization research design’, Organizational Research Methods, 16:4, pp. 557–80.
     [Google Scholar]
  74. Saidi, A. I., Puspitasari, D. G. and Hermawan, F. F. (2021), ‘Narrative patterns in Indonesian fine art’, Britain International of Linguistics Arts and Education (BIoLAE) Journal, 3:1, pp. 77–87.
     [Google Scholar]
  75. Shafique, M. (2013), ‘Thinking inside the box? Intellectual structure of the knowledge base of innovation research (1988–2008)’, Strategic Management Journal, 34:1, pp. 62–93.
     [Google Scholar]
  76. Silverman, L. L. (2006), ‘How do you keep the right people on the bus? Try stories’, The Journal for Quality and Participation, 29:4, pp. 11–15.
     [Google Scholar]
  77. Simmons, A. (2015), Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact (trans. Z. Bakhtari), Tehran: Atraf.
     [Google Scholar]
  78. Stark, J., Reif, J. A. and Schiebler, T. (2021), ‘What leaders tell and employees hear: An intention-perception model of storytelling in leadership’, Organization Management Journal, 19:2, pp. 72–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  79. Strawson, G. (2004), ‘Tales of the unexpected’, The Guardian, 10 January, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/10/society.philosophy. Accessed 27 July 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  80. Surwase, G., Kademani, B. S. and Bhanumurthy, K. (2012), ‘Mapping the structure and development of science using co-citation analysis’, in National Workshop on Using Different Metrics for Accessing Research Productivity, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India, 16–17 February, Kolkata: Indian Statistical Institute, pp. 164–74.
     [Google Scholar]
  81. Taqi, M., Gurkaynak, N. and Gencer, M. (2019), ‘Marketing concept evolution: A bibliometrics co-occurrence analysis’, Marketing and Management of Innovations, 2, pp. 185–97, https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2019.2-16.
     [Google Scholar]
  82. Todorov, T. (1973), The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (trans. R. Howard), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  83. Tomkins, S. S. (1979), ‘Script theory: Differential magnification of affects’, in H. E. Howe and R. A. Dienstbier (eds), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol. 26, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 201–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  84. Vaara, E., Sonenshein, S. and Boje, D. (2016), ‘Narratives as sources of stability and change in organizations: Approaches and directions for future research’, Academy of Management Annals, 10:1, pp. 495–560.
     [Google Scholar]
  85. Van De Mieroop, D. (2021), ‘The Narrative Dimensions Model and an exploration of various narrative genres’, Narrative Inquiry, 31:1, pp. 4–27.
     [Google Scholar]
  86. Van De Mieroop, D. (2021), ‘Applying the Narrative Dimensions Model’, Workplace Communication III, 12, pp. 13–31, https://vakki.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/VAKKI2020_VandeMieroop_pdf.pdf. Accessed 1 May 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  87. van Eck, N. J. (2011), Methodological Advances in Bibliometric Mapping of Science, Ph.D. Series Research in Management, Rotterdam: Erasmus Research Institute of Management, http://hdl.handle.net/1765/26509. Accessed 1 May 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  88. Volker, X. J., Phillips, D. M. and Anderson, J. S. (2011), ‘Storytelling: A portal to understanding entrepreneurial organizations’, Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 5:3, pp. 104–09.
     [Google Scholar]
  89. Waites, W. (2021), ‘Executable storytelling with rule-based models’, MSP Seminar, The Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases (CMMID), University of Strathclyde, 17 June.
     [Google Scholar]
  90. Wang, H. and Yang, Y. (2019), ‘Neighbourhood walkability: A review and bibliometric analysis’, Cities, 93, pp. 43–61.
     [Google Scholar]
  91. Wang, Q., Qu, J., Wang, B., Wang, P. and Yang, T. (2019), ‘Green technology innovation development in China in 1990–2015’, Science of the Total Environment, 696, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134008.
     [Google Scholar]
  92. Weick, K. E. (1995), Sensemaking in Organizations, London: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  93. Wise, M. N. (2021), ‘Does narrative matter? Engendering belief in electromagnetic theory’, in M. Carrier, R. Mertens and C. Reinhardt (eds), Narratives and Comparisons: Adversaries or Allies in Understanding Science?, Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press, pp. 29–62.
     [Google Scholar]
  94. Zupic, I. and Čater, T. (2015), ‘Bibliometric methods in management and organization’, Organizational Research Methods, 18:3, pp. 429–72.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/dbs_00055_1
Loading
A bibliometric study of organizational storytelling/narrative research
Journal of Design, Business & Society 9, 221 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1386/dbs_00055_1
/content/journals/10.1386/dbs_00055_1
/content/journals/10.1386/dbs_00055_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): analysis; co-citation; co-occurrence; organizational maturity; science mapping; Web of Science (WoS)

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error