Approaching the Diversity of Narratives in Strategy Research

Reference Barry and ElmesBarry and Elmes (1997) were the first to acknowledge the role of narratives in processes of strategizing and strategy as a form of fiction that creates a story about the future. In their view, strategy narratives must be credible (or believable) and defamiliarizing (or novel), and there is often a tension between these two requisites. They suggested to consider how strategists engage in story making, how they draw on narratives from mainstream thought, how power and politics are reflected in strategy narratives, and how divergent narratives are reconciled. Since their seminal publication (Reference Barry and ElmesBarry and Elmes 1997), it has become generally accepted that strategy – organizational strategies and theories of strategy alike – consists of stories told by key people to other people such as shareholders, members of the organization and stakeholders. This work has highlighted the double nature of strategy – both narrative production and process of narration – by which various stories about strategic choices are connected, tested, reinforced or weakened. This stream of research has identified the main genres of strategy narratives: epic (dramatic or heroic tales), technofuturist (complex and detailed ‘quasi-scientific’ texts) and purist (defamiliarizing, almost atemporal stories). It has also emphasized the fictitious nature of strategy, and linked strategic change processes to the romantic genre, the adventure novel of ordeal, and to realistic fiction (Reference Vaara and Reff PedersenVaara and Reff Pedersen 2013). With a certain irony, these authors underline the hagiographic character of strategic discourses. For example, the promotion of neo-Schumpeterian heroes in entrepreneurial strategies created a heroic drift in many research accounts of new venture founding (Reference de la Ville, Bernasconi, Harris and Monstedde la Ville 2006).

Why are stories and narratives so interesting? The basic function of a story is to organize a series of events and actors into a common, acceptable and comprehensible temporal framework. By reorganizing events in a temporal framework, stories preserve and build the continuity of actions. The perception of the stakes of the present situation enables us to reorganize past events into a story. Restructuring a group of relationships creates retrospective sense, hence enabling further action. This faculty of generating meaning has led researchers to become interested in stories told within organizations. Stories may not only present themselves as whole stories with a coherent plot and a definitive structure, such as ‘grand narratives’ do, but they also encompass small stories constructed by individuals in everyday life, as well as story fragments or ante-narratives (Reference BojeBoje 2001), and even gossip (Reference GabrielGabriel 2000). This focus on ‘small stories’ (Reference GeorgakopoulouGeorgakopoulou 2007) elaborated in mundane interactions directly contributes to the narrative turn moving from stories as texts to narration as a practice (Reference Da Fina and GeorgakopoulouDa Fina and Georgakopoulou 2011).

Stories and storytelling have now pervaded management, strategy and marketing research (Reference BoyceBoyce 1996; Reference SalmonSalmon 2007) and have put to the forefront a new array of consultants and gurus (Reference Clark and SalamanClark and Salaman 1998) who help managers make sense of their patterns of action. Good stories are thus considered as an effective factor in implementing strategic ideas. Strategy formulation now involves the production of an integrative story that enables organizational leaders to reorganize past events according to a plausible and desirable logic. What is at stake is the capacity of stories to construct a persuasive and stimulating message to facilitate memorization and training, or to persuade stakeholders of the relevance of a strategy. Leaders need to be good storytellers – that is, be able to tell convincing stories that must be both consistent to gain credibility, and stimulating to facilitate their reception and implementation. ‘A literature has developed around the promoting of storytelling as a formalized practice or management technique in itself’ (Reference Fenton and LangleyFenton and Langley 2011: 1179). Other aspects of strategy-making as a narrative practice have been documented since. Reference Kaplan and OrlikowskiKaplan and Orlikowski (2013) focused on temporality in strategy-making and elaborated a model on how constructions of the past, present and future are a central part of strategy work, thus encompassing the role of ‘history-telling’ in strategy-making. They articulate how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present and future to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic action. Reference Dalpiaz and Di StefanoDalpiaz and Di Stefano (2018) examined how strategy-makers bring about transformative change through captivating narratives that enabled strategy-makers to win audiences’ ‘minds and hearts’. They link the mobilization of these practices to strategy-makers’ ability to harness the tension between novelty and familiarity. Reference Sinha, Jaskiewicz, Gibb and CombsSinha et al. (2020) identified how managers use narratives to rearrange the influence of historically imprinted strategic guideposts or to modify the scope where they apply. Reference Sasaki, Kotlar, Ravasi and VaaraSasaki et al. (2020) analysed the intergenerational transfer of historical narratives in Japanese firms to understand the reasons and implications for their reformulations. They suggested a nuanced view, whereby the successful transmission of past values retold in narratives requires firms to skilfully balance selective remembering and forgetting, to reconcile strategic changes with the legacy of a revered past.

Most of this research shares a functionalist standpoint on narratives: the construction of a good strategy story supposes an overall intentionality and does not consider unintentional phenomena such as improvisations or routine activities. This functionalistic view of strategy stories fails to capture the complexity of strategic processes and practices as it prevents us from including the ordinary narratives of organizational members in relationship with the ‘visionary’ strategic stories produced by senior executives. Can the integrative strategic story be considered effective without including the interpretations of people to whom it is addressed? Research on strategic narratives has long struggled to deconstruct this overly simplistic view of managerial narratives.

Indeed, Barbara Czarniawska suggests three different modes of mobilizing narratives to advance organizational research: the researcher can build explanations out of ‘narratives from the field’, he might eventually build his/her own ‘narrative in the field’, and even in a third mode, he can consider ‘organizing as narration’ (Reference CzarniawskaCzarniawska 1997: 25). In a detailed review Reference Vaara, Sonenshein and BojeVaara, Sonenshein and Boje (2016) group the narrative research on change in three categories. The first group entitled ‘realist approaches’ uses narratives as data and focuses on the researcher’s construction of the case study. The second group called ‘interpretive approaches’ goes beyond the functionalist limitation and examines polyphony or plurivocality in organizational and strategic processes as researchers put together narratives by collecting accounts from several organizational actors (Reference Balogun and JohnsonBalogun and Johnson 2004). For example, Reference VaaraVaara (2002) distinguishes between four types of narrative discourses (rationalistic, cultural, role-bound and individualistic) as means for managers to make sense of success or failure, to attribute credit and blame, and to account for their own responsibility. Reference SonensheinSonenshein (2010) identifies three narratives (progressive, stability and regressive) that provide different means for making sense of and giving meaning to changes. Reference Dailey and BrowningDailey and Browning (2014) explore narrative repetition – when a story is recalled and retold from another narrative – and describe how the meaning of stories shifts over time and through people repeating them: some may interpret a narrative of stability, whereas others may hear a hint of change from the same narrative. They usefully recommend scholars draw on the recurrence of a story as a starting point for inquiry into organizations. While setting an agenda for narrative research, Reference Fenton and LangleyFenton and Langley (2011) urge researchers to examine the diversity of local narratives, ranging from small stories and ante-narratives, that underly more global ones, such as master stories and grand narratives. They point out that narratives can be found in the micro-stories of organizational members, in the techniques of strategizing, in the accounts people provide of their work, and in the various artefacts produced by and for strategizing. Thus narrative research has come to highlight the role of strategy ‘readers’ as well as strategy ‘writers’, and to include the heterogeneity of narrative interpretations. The third group encompasses ‘two kinds of poststructuralist studies’: narrative deconstruction that aims to problematize prevailing or dominant narratives, and narrative emergence that seeks to uncover the central role of emerging narratives in organizational processes. Focusing on stories and storytelling as strategic practices, the investigation aims at deciphering which narratives are marginalized and which others are rendered dominant. It also leads to pay attention to the role of narrators, settings, political tactics and performance in determining whose voices are heard and whose voices are silenced. These studies highlight the disciplining power of strategy on the ordinary practices of organization members, stemming from their capacity to impose and legitimize certain interpretative frameworks at the expense of others. It resonates with Foucault’s warning that it is a question ‘of no longer treating the discourses as sets of signs (of meaningful elements which refer to contents or representations), but as practices which systematically form the objects about which they speak’ (Reference FoucaultFoucault 1976). Discourses should be considered ‘surreptitious objectivations’ (objectivations subreptices, in French): they appear to be built by induction and serve as descriptors of the world, but in fact they actively constitute the world. Thus strategy includes a disciplining dimension that emphasizes the importance of the stakes of power and legitimization invoked in the strategic exercise. Critical theorists assume that dynamics of power and politics sustain a dominant story in the organization, while other voices and stories are less frequently heard or are silenced. Reference Knights and MorganKnights and Morgan (1991) suggested that the grand narratives of strategy not only constitute legitimate strategic practices, they also contribute to defining who is or can be seen as a ‘strategist’. Reference Laine and VaaraLaine and Vaara (2007) showed how middle managers and engineers constructed their roles in satisfying customers and solving their problems as strategic, against corporate managers affirming their ‘exclusive’ roles as strategists above other employees. Reference Mantere and VaaraMantere and Vaara (2008) analysed that SAP involves alternative, sometimes competing, discourses that have fundamentally different kinds of implications for participation in strategy work. Reference Vaara and TienariVaara and Tienari (2011) used ante-narrative analysis to examine change in an international merger case. They analysed how three ante-narratives (globalist, nationalist, Nordic) were mobilized by organizational actors as the merger process unfolded. Following Reference BojeBoje (2008), they identified four types of dialogue in the mobilization of these ante-narratives: polyphony articulating multiple voices, chronotopes as space-time configurations, stylistic dialogism between modes of representation, and interplay of various cognitive, aesthetic and ethical discourses. Poststructuralist narrative analysts eventually point to the underlying assumptions of dominant narratives such as totalism, universalism or essentialism (Reference Vaara, Sonenshein and BojeVaara, Sonenshein and Boje 2016).

Taking Narratives Seriously in Strategy-Making

In this section, we draw on Czarniawska’s view of ‘Organizing as narration’ that is grounded in the claim made by Reference McIntyreMcIntyre (1988) that ‘it is useful to think of an enacted narrative as the most typical form of social life’ (quoted by Reference Czarniawska, Gubrium and HolsteinCzarniawska 2002). Having a deep interest in the daily activities of the organization members, which result in the creation of the organization itself, Reference CzarniawskaCzarniawska (1997) identifies two types of conversations: those allowing for the confrontation of personal experience or actions between two parties, and those manufacturing texts which impose standards of behaviour and decision beyond the personal experience of the individual. This coexistence results in fierce competition between the ‘stronger’ order – that of the official discourse, which reinforces institutional domination by controlling interpretations – and the ‘weaker’ order – that of the mundane narratives, which try to make sense of daily activities. Her work takes an ironic stance regarding the impact of strategists, as she finds strategy to be a relatively artificial discursive construction, far removed from the realities experienced by organization members, and geared to institutional concerns for domination and justification. Without any impact on the future of organizations and with no control over its daily activities, strategy appears in her descriptions to be a kind of meaningless ritual (Reference de la Ville, Mounoud, Czarniawska and Gagliardide la Ville and Mounoud 2003). This assessment is partly explained by Czarniawska’s focus on public organizations, in which the distance between official discourses and daily practices might be particularly visible.

In Czarniawska’s view, everyday life within the organization takes shape through ordinary narratives in which individuals select events, organize temporalities, typify key characters, build identity relationships, structure their experience and construct and transform their interpretations. Drawing on Bruner’s point that ‘there is an availability, or a predisposition to organize experience in narrative form by building intrigues’ (Reference BrunerBruner 1990), we assume that the continuity of existence may be understood by recounting this same existence – a narrative process of fashioning one another’s identities. Through the spoken word, exchanged and retained among themselves, organization members construct and perpetuate their identities and their organized activity. Language, speech, plot production, mere stories and ordinary narrations are experienced as inherent to organizing itself. The construction of activities, knowledge and identities is thus structured in and through a complex interlacing of narrative processes, which is always spontaneous, related to unforeseen events and socially organized patterns (Reference CzarniawskaCzarniawska 1998).

The interest of social scientists in narratives is linked to the issue of how people organize knowledge in their daily life. Research suggests that people organize their experience in the form of scripts about goal-based events that include people, places and events, and that these scripts are recounted in the form of stories. Reference BrunerBruner (1986), among others, has argued that it is difficult to distinguish between the stories children learn and the stories they build from their direct experience and knowledge. The narrative ability to create stories develops during childhood through reminiscing and engaging in symbolic play (Reference EngelEngel 1995). Narrativity does not merely convey fantasies or the representation of unusual feelings or experiences, but also provides a fundamental intra- and interpersonal process, through which children make sense of themselves in the world. Storytelling is simultaneously a deep social activity and a powerful private activity. Children tell stories when alone, they tell stories that have private meanings for their internal thoughts and feelings, and they use stories to communicate. It is important to keep in mind that the form and content of children’s stories are tied to the context in which they are told and the purpose for which they are told (Reference Engel, Greene and HoganEngel 2005). The narrative paradigm (Reference FisherFisher 1984; Reference Fisher1989) claims that all meaningful communication occurs via storytelling or reporting of events, as human beings are storytelling animals that make sense of their world and their own lives through narrative understanding. For Reference FisherFisher (1989: 57), ‘all forms of human communication can be seen fundamentally as stories, as interpretations of aspects of the world occurring in time and shaped by history, culture and character’. Communication can be assessed in terms of what Reference FisherFisher (1984) calls ‘narrative probability’ (internal coherence and consistency) and ‘narrative fidelity’ (resonance with listeners or readers’ values and historical and cultural understandings). The narrative paradigm is purportedly all-encompassing, allowing all communication to be looked at as a narrative even though it may not conform to the traditional literary requirements of a narrative. As storytelling is one of the first language skills that children develop, thus, people communicate by telling/observing a compelling story, rather than by producing evidence or constructing a logical argument.

Organizational studies use ‘narrative’ as a metaphor for organizing, as ‘any organizational activity can be anticipated prospectively, and understood retrospectively, as a narrative’ (Reference CoorenCooren 2000: 181; cf. Reference Taylor and van EveryTaylor and van Every 2000). In that perspective, ordinary activities develop through a ‘chain of conversations’ spread out in time and space in a polyphonic vision of organizations ‘where several voices are heard and where the heteroglossia – the simultaneous presence of several languages – is accepted’ (Reference GirouxGiroux 1998: 7, our translation). The formulation of strategy is then conceived as a narrative process that organizes a specific polyphony never controlled by one single author. Strategy is worked out gradually by negotiation within a ‘meta-conversation’ (Reference Giroux and DemersGiroux and Demers 1997) dedicated to strategy formation, that finally leads to the writing of a strategic text. This view draws on the analytical distinction between the two dimensions of discourse as text (what is said) and conversation (what is accomplished in the saying): ‘Conversation refers, in other words, to the interactive, situated “eventfulness” of language use; text refers to the semiotic artefact (oral or written) produced in the use of language, which may persist as a trace and record of past conversations’ (Reference Robichaud, Giroux and TaylorRobichaud, Giroux and Taylor 2004). The meta-conversation simultaneously incorporates and reconstructs the local discussions within the organization into an encompassing conversation, in which the identity of the whole organization is continuously regenerated. The process at work is the production of a meta-narrative that enfolds and transcends the narratives of the different communities comprising the organization (see Cooren et al., Chapter 21 in this volume; Reference Cooren, Bencherki, Chaput, Vásquez and GolsorkhiCooren et al. 2015).

Turning to Consumption and the Creative Art of Reading

For Michel de Certeau, consumption supposes the acceptance of an offer of products, but not in a passive way. Consumers are active. They take pleasure in consuming and consider themselves free and creative in doing so. Under the apparent banality of ordinary gestures and routine actions lurks an extraordinary creativity often ignored by theory. Individuals show a great capacity for ‘making do’. They exhibit inventiveness in terms of shrewd ploys and stratagems to work out their own way of doing things, whether it is cooking, strolling, shopping or whatever. When analysed superficially, certain routine behaviours reveal a form of submission, but under scrutiny, they reveal ongoing experimentations filled with resistance and creativity. The relationship between reading and writing is of a comparable nature: texts, just like goods on the market, are produced by writers who offer them to consumers – the readers – who decide upon their significance and muddle through to use them in their own ways and for their own purposes.

This provides a new way of looking at practice, because it enables us to accept strategic discourses as a production and an offer of a (cultural) good: a text. Thus, we might be able to suggest new ways of explaining how people read, use and transform this particular cultural product. Reference Linstead and Grafton-SmallLinstead and Grafton-Small (1992) contrast the production of corporate culture with the creative consumption of organizational culture by organization members. Within this conception, it is necessary to supplement the analysis of the discourse of strategy (representation) and of the time spent attending strategic meetings (behaviour) with a study of what middle managers and employees actually ‘make’ or ‘do’ during that time and how they use these discourses. Nevertheless, their ‘making’ or ‘doing’ being devious and dispersed, it remains difficult for the researcher to analyse.

In organizations, employees and managers do not adopt, adhere to or share the ‘strategic’ vision or intent of their ‘charismatic leaders’. In their everyday activities, they actively interpret, criticize, learn and experiment with possible attitudes and micro-decisions to implement or resist the multiple implications of strategic changes imposed on them. This reading – or consumption – of strategic texts constitutes a second-order production, which de Certeau calls a ‘fabrication’ – that is, a narrative that is added to the intention of strategic texts. Reading takes place through the mobilization of innumerable fragmentary, instantaneous and opportunistic tactics (Reference de la Ville and Mounoudde la Ville and Mounoud 2001a).

Being incapable of capitalizing voluntarily on their achievements to control temporality and the course of events, these tactics, which are peculiar to the art of reading, may produce tangible and sometimes irreversible strategic effects, such as delays in implementation, side-tracking from main objectives, operational diversions, symbolic rejections or subversion of authority. Daily practice expresses creativity, a capacity ‘to put up with’, to subvert imposed rules and create room for manoeuvre. Practice includes the subconscious part of creativity, seen in clever devices and inventions. This creativity is also evident in attempts to negotiate meanings of actions and events among organization members – that is, in ordinary and everyday narratives. The narrative register indeed enables such a practical art to express itself, to experiment, to improvise and to resist the domination of a disciplining totality envisaged by some strategic texts.

Considering Polyphony and Intertextuality in Strategic Texts Production

Because they represent a relation with the world, strategic texts cannot ignore the multiplicity of voices, actions and narratives within the organization (Reference Giroux and DemersGiroux and Demers 1997). The very production of strategic texts organizes a polyphonic relationship among voices, which always remain singular and develop autonomously, but answer one another, oppose one another, and contribute to proposing new worlds (Reference HardyHardy 2004; Reference O’ConnorO’Connor 2000). Strategy formation proceeds from the application of strategic practices, going beyond the order of discourse and the conversation to integrate a body of knowledge including simultaneously explicit activities and tacit tactics. Furthermore, the ordinary practices of managers and the texts that underlie them, through the resistance that they express, continually nourish the inventiveness of the organizational actions and form an ongoing, emerging and vital part of the strategic activity. Either these practices are gradually recognized, named and defined so as to be integrated into the strategic text or they remain invisible, or external to the organization as they occur outside official channels. Thus, strategic texts operate a selection and organization of mundane organizational narratives. Strategic texts constitute forms of mediation, in and through which organizational actors reflexively understand their situations, give meaning to their actions, nurture their professional identity, and anticipate their futures. Production of strategic texts is informed by both the context – the preceding texts and genre with which they interact and contribute, and the situation – the mundane organizational activities and practices to which they relate and help organize in return. This refers to the notions of ‘intertextuality’ and ‘polyphony’ that might offer reliable insights on strategy formation.

The notion of ‘intertextuality’ allows us to appreciate writing as a permanently creative flux, integrating previous standards and conventions to produce texts that are likely to be readable, understandable and recognizable by an audience. It has been described by Julia Reference KristevaKristeva (1980: 69) as a reaction to the tendency to analyse texts as discrete and closed units, the meaningfulness of which lay in their internal structure. Drawing on the dialogue perspective proposed by Mikhail Reference BakhtinBakhtin (1968) in literary theory, she contends that texts become meaningful if they are considered as a fragment relating to former texts. Shared codes allow both the writer and the reader to recognize, situate and appreciate the text in the continuum of literary production. It is worth noting that this post-structuralist perspective considers that every text is under the dominance of previous texts, which impose a universe of codes in relation to which it will be read and understood by certain audiences. This suggests a drastic shift in the method of analysing reading and writing by focusing the effort on studying the process of structuration through which the text comes into being. By questioning the romantic roots that lead to the invention of the notion of ‘authorship’, this perspective lays special emphasis on the fact that writers are compelled to use pre-existing concepts and conventions to communicate with an audience. Their individual creative skills are socially founded in shared language and scriptural conventions. Therefore, Reference BarthesBarthes (1974) defines text as a tissue of quotations, a creative art consisting in weaving together former codes, references and genres. Texts draw upon a large range of codes and social norms that allow them to be assigned to a particular genre. Genres are situated and evolving conventions that enable us to classify texts and outline their relationship with each other. Literary theorists evidenced that the definition of genres is quite fluid and relates to ongoing changes and social renegotiations, leading to a permanent blurring of borders and a constant mitigation of their distinctive characteristics (Reference BakhtinBakhtin 1968; Reference BarthesBarthes 1974; Reference KristevaKristeva 1980).

Strategic texts are embedded in intertextual relations in multiple ways. First, they are related to pre-existent strategic texts within an organization and the settings in which they have been produced, reinforcing a temporal view on strategy, even beyond temporal work (Reference Kaplan and OrlikowskiKaplan and Orlikowski 2013). Second, strategic texts are governed by discursive orders based on strategic management as a discipline (Reference HardyHardy 2004). In a documented essay, Reference Whittington, Cailluet and Yakis-DouglasWhittington, Cailluet and Yakis-Douglas (2011) depict the progressive structuring of strategy since the 1950s as the emergence of a precarious professional field, including corporate elites, strategic planners, consultancy companies, academics and middle managers, that is shaped permanently by changing organizational, societal, cultural and technological forces. For Reference Whittington, Jarzabkowski, Mayer, Mounoud, Nahapiet and RouleauWhittington et al. (2003), we should deepen the role of consultants and business schools in promoting strategic practices over others. Third, strategic texts are imbued with the constitutive values of the institutional environment in which they are embedded. Strategy inevitably includes an ideological dimension, because it reproduces the inequalities of the capitalist society, extends Western managerial structures, and presents the objectives of dominant elites as universal goals. Therefore, we need to keep a critical eye on the institutional field of strategic management and the behaviour it promotes (Reference Blom, Alvesson, Golsorkhi, Rouleau and SeidlBlom and Alvesson 2015; Reference Vaara and WhittingtonVaara and Whittington 2012). There are many challenges for strategy to taking intertextuality into account, even more so to combining it with organizational polyphony.

Studying Narratives through the ‘mise en intrigue’

The concept of plot developed by Paul Reference RicœurRicœur (1984) helps to bring to light the various narratives produced while organizational members consume strategic texts and cope with daily activities. Reference RicœurRicœur (1984) has built the concept of ‘emplotment’ (mise en intrigue) around Aristotle’s sentence that ‘the plot is the imitation of the action – for by plot, I here mean the arrangement of the incidents’ (Poetics, part VI). For Ricœur, narratives combine the Aristotelian concepts of mimesis (imitation) and muthos (arrangement of the incidents). A narrative consists in the invention of a plot and a work of synthesis. Through the plot, objectives, causes and incidents are brought together under the temporal unity of an action that is complete and forms a whole. This ‘mise en intrigue’ allows the fictional narrative to differ from the historical narrative through the elaboration of a ‘world of the text’, which constitutes a fictive experience. The setting of the plot in and by the fictional narrative consequently makes it possible to juxtapose, during the act of reading, two experiences: the lived experience as perceived by the subject and the fictitious experience. Ricœur insisted on conciliatory virtues of plots, but for contemporary theorists, ‘what intrigues in the plots, what stimulates the narrative desire, the imagination and the sensibility of the reader, it is more the conflicts, the misunderstandings, the doubts, the obsessions, the fears, the errors; in short, all that is paradox, aporia and dead ends’ (Reference VilleneuveVilleneuve 2004). This narrativity creates a narrative tension, experienced by the readers as an effect of suspense, curiosity or surprise, which activates and supports the interest of the readers and gives the plot its dynamics. Reference Corbett-Etchevers and MounoudCorbett-Etchevers and Mounoud (2011) disclose the consumption of a management idea through four plots that provide an account not only in terms of adopting and using, but also in terms of organizational and individual experiences. They show that management ideas are co-consumed through multiple, iterative, continuous emplotment, unfolding at multiple levels across time, people and micro-practices. Focusing on daily narratives allows them to grasp all the contradictions and tensions brought by strategy in the organization’s daily activity and to show how individuals cope with them. In the same vein, Reference O’ConnorO’Connor (2000) considers that the embedded plotting is a narrative construct for studying change within the organization. Analysing ‘emplotment’ is a way of approaching the organizational modus operandi that shapes the individual experience through the mobilization of social, political and cultural practices already pervading the organization. Considering emplotment as immanent in the socio-political-culturally infused modus operandi and predispositions of an organization (Reference MacKay, Chia and NairMacKay, Chia and Nair 2021) is a consistent way to escape the illusion of an autonomous actor able to decide or strategize in a lonely manner. The capacity of emplotment to link mundane narratives with strategic issues is a key organizational activity based on the socio-political-culturally infused modus operandi. Narrativity might be imbued in middle managers’ practices such as invoking usefulness, constructing acceptability and authorizing plausibility of numbers (Reference Fauré and RouleauFauré and Rouleau 2011), ‘performing the conversation’ and ‘setting the scene’ (Reference Rouleau and BalogunRouleau and Balogun 2011), communicative practices of presentifying, substantiating, attributing and crystallizing matters of concern (Reference Bencherki, Sergi, Cooren and VásquezBencherki et al. 2019), discursive practices of equalizing, re/defining, simplifying, legitimating and reconciling (Reference Kwon, Clarke and WodakKwon et al. 2014). One way of proceeding is to use narrative as an analytical tool rather than an object of study (Reference Feldman, Almquist, Holstein and GubriumFeldman and Almquist 2012). ‘Rhetorical analysis’ identifies unstated assumptions by highlighting oppositions and constructing syllogisms in institutional narratives. In this case, the text itself does not necessarily begin in a narrative state, but they consider an underlying narrative as part of the analysis. ‘Narrative network analysis’ describes processes in narrative form to generate a visual representation of these actions via a network chart. Researchers then use these charts to explore implicit values and assumptions of the process and draft possible alternatives. Considering narrative as a tool of analysis rather than an object of study opens new possibilities to the narrative paradigm.