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Narratives and Organizational DynamicsExploring Blind Spots and Organizational InertiaJohannes Kepler University
University of Liverpool Management School This article aims to demonstrate how narratives have the potential to bring about organizational inertia by creating self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. Drawing on extensive interview data from a U.K. bio-manufacturing company, the empirical analysis shows how such narratives emerge by constructing a web of related, self-reinforcing narratives reflecting a consistent theme. The analysis demonstrates how the dominant (success) narrative remains vivid despite the existence of deviating narratives and severe crisis. In particular, the empirical findings illustrate how narratives construct a self-sustaining frame of reference, preventing the organization from questioning the principles underlying its past success. The discussion explains how narratives create self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. It contributes to our understanding of the role of narratives in organizational change efforts and illustrates the way such self-reinforcing blind spots become a potential source of organizational inertia and path-dependence.
Key Words: narratives • organizational change • inertia • blind spots
This version was published on September
1, 2009 The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 45, No. 3,
411-436 (2009) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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