Organizational Storytelling Seminar Series

This series of seminars is aimed at bringing together scholars who are interested in the nature of stories and storytelling in organizations, and the use of stories in research on different aspects of organizational life, including politics, gender, culture, leadership and emotion.

Future seminars

More information and booking details for future seminar can be found here.

Past Seminars


Click on the list below for more information - click again to close

Seminar 1

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 1 took place on the 9 July 2001, in Imperial College London, and was led by the following speakers:
  • David Boje "Stories of Tamara-land and Storytelling gameboard"
  • Yiannis Gabriel "Stories, facts, motives and reasons"
  • Yehuda Baruch "from Macro (stories) to Micro (language) and back"
  • "Storytelling in Organizations" workshop conducted by a group of storytellers with organizational consultancy experience

Seminar 2

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 2 took place on the 6 December 2001, in Imperial College London, and was led by the following speakers:
  • Howard Stein "Storytelling and Narratives in Traumatized Organizations: Issue In Method, Theory, and Application."
  • Ato Quayson "Social Imaginaries in Transition: The Culture Hero in African Literature and Politics"

Seminar 3

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 3 was held in University College Cork, Ireland on 28 and 29 June 2002, and was led by the following speakers:
  • Yehuda Baruch (School of Management, University of East Anglia) on "Once upon a Time there was an Organization... Organizational Stories as an Anti-thesis to Fairy Tales."
  • Linda Ballard (Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland) on "Plotting the Tale"
  • Gibson Burrell (Warwick Business School) on "Subalterns and the Stage :'Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead' versus 'Hamlet'"
  • Peter Case (Oxford-Brooks University) on "Blindness and Sight, Ignorance and Understanding: An Ancient Buddhist Fable Speaks to Contemporary Issues in Organizational Studies"
  • Barbara Czarniawska (Göteborg University) on "Humiliation: A Standard Organizational Product"
  • Yiannis Gabriel (School of Management, Imperial College) on "Telling Tales: Truths and Untruths in Storytelling".
  • Sebastian Green (Dept. of Management & Marketing, University College Cork) and Colette Green on "Organizational Constellations: A Separate Reality".
  • Heather Höpfl (Newcastle Business School, University of Northumbria at Newcastle) on "Corrupting Practices: Stories of the Organisation and the Mouth of Hell"
  • Steve Linstead (Dept. of Accounting, Finance and Management, University of Essex) on "Masks of Subversion: Telling Stories of Storytelling"
  • Gearóid ó Crualaoich (Dept. of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork) on "Vernacular Narrative Tradition as Resource for Conflict/Trauma Resolution: The Case of the Irish 'Wise Woman' Legend"
  • Majella O'Leary, Donncha Kavanagh and Diarmuid ó Giolláin (Dept. of Management & Marketing, and Department of Folklore and Ethnology University College Cork) on "Stories of the Subaltern"
  • Bo Nilsson (the Nordic Museum, Stockholm) on "Between Agency and Discourse in Subaltern Life History Narratives. The Swedish Case."
  • David Sims (School of Business and Management, Brunel University) on "Between the millstones: who cares about the subaltern's storying?"

Seminar 4

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 4 took place on 1 July 2003 at Cass Business School, City University and was led by the following speakers:
  • Tony Watson and Denise Fletcher from Nottingham Business School who spent the morning using a drama to reflect on an entrepreneurial start-up.
  • Dave Snowden, Director of IBM's Cynefin Knowledge Centre, who talked about recent developments in the methodology and practice in the Centre in, for example, working on counter terrorism with US government agencies.

Seminar 5

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 5, "The End of Stories and the Limits of Storytelling", took place at the University of Exeter on 25 and 26 June 2004. The seminar was organized by Majella O'Leary and Christian De Cock and speakers included Yiannis Gabriel, Barbara Czarniawska, Nelson Phillips, David Knights, Emma Surman, Julie Allan, Peter Case, Georg Schreyogg and Ursula Schneider.

Seminar 6

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 6 took place on the 13 December 2004, and was hosted by the Centre for Narrative Studies, School of Management, Southampton University. It was led by the following speakers: Steve Denning, (Washington DC) "The Emerging Management Discipline of Narrative", Professor Cliff Oswick (University of Leicester) "Stories as metaphor and metaphors in stories: liberating or constraining devices"

Seminar 7

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 7 took place on the 19 December, 2005, at Dorich House, Kingston University, Kingston, London and was led by the following speakers:
  • Raficq Abdullah MBE, ‘Words of Paradise – Birds of the Soul’
  • Dr Paula James and Dr Julia Courtney (Open University) ‘The role of the parrot in literature’
  • Dr Jamie Ward (Visiting Fellow, Kingston University) ‘The North – South divide in the Morrisons and Safeways merger’.
  • Professor Trisha Greenhalgh (UCL) ‘Narrative methods in quality improvement in the NHS’.
  • Chris Oliver (Queen Mary, UoL) ‘Reflective Inquiry’

More information about this seminar can be found here.

Seminar 8

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 8 took place at the University of Southampton, 5 May 2006. It was intended principally for doctoral students, researchers and practitioners who are at an early stage of their research careers, and practitioners about to embark on using narrative methods within their organisations. It took the form of a Panel Session, in which experienced researchers discussed (and disagreed about!) aspects of storytelling research. An important objective was to link researchers into informal networks with other researchers, and to provide a forum for debate about practical and theoretical issues.

More information about this seminar can be found here.

Seminar 9

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 9 took place at the University of East Anglia, 29-30 June 2006.

More information about this seminar can be found here.

Seminar 10

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 10 took place at the University of Bath, School of Management, 18 December 2006. The programme, introduced by Andrew Brown, included nine papers: A year in the life of an entrepreneur: Narratives of identity and transformation (Christian De Cock , Natahsa Slutskaya & Emma Surman); Once upon a time: A tale of isolation and maturation (Christine Coupland); Storytelling for Pain Study (STOPS) (William House); Researching and Supervising by Storying Around: An autoethnographic trio (Thomas Thornborrow , Michael Humphreys & Andrew Brown); Change across boundaries: Emotion entrepreneurs tell their stories (Helen Kara); The paradoxical role of narrative in organizational change
(Benjamin Golant & John Sillince); Understanding processes of organizational change: Longitudinal studies and the construction of theory from narratives (Anna Soulsby & Ed Clark); Organizational identity narrative and legitimacy under major environmental changes: The case of UK building societies
(Hongwei He & Yehuda Baruch); Story & anti-story: Patterns of narrative in organizational change situations (Stefanie Reissner). The seminar ended with a discussion led by David Sims.

More information about this seminar can be found here.

Seminar 11

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 11 took place at Royal Holloway College, University of London, 16th March 2007.

Further details are available here.

Seminar 12

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 12 took place at Queen Mary, University of London, 7-8 June 2007.

Further details can be found here.

Seminar 13

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 13 took place on Friday 14th March 2008 at Royal Holloway, University of London. It was aimed principally at doctoral students, or those whose research in organisational storytelling is at an early stage. The theme of the seminar was "Generating stories as part of a social research agenda".

For more details about the seminar, please click here.

Seminar 14

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 14 took place on May 19th 2008 in Utrecht, NV, and was also aimed at doctoral students. The theme of this seminar was 'Stories of Organizational Change Stories'.

More details can be found here.

Seminar 15

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 15 took place on 30 & 31 October 2008 at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU University Amsterdam) . Its theme “Talking about the weather, where do we go? – a seminar about stories in use” spawned several presentations and discussions on how stories reflect and stimulate organizational change.

More details can be found here.

Seminar 16

Organizational Storytelling Seminar 16 took place on 15th May 2009 at the Manchester Business School . Its theme “Stories we do not tell in organisations: gender, sexuality, heteronormativity and otherness”.

More details can be found here.