Narratives of Organisational Change and Learning: Making Sense of Testing Times

Narratives of Organisational Change and Learning explores how organisations learn from profound change and create new futures through the narrative process of sense-making.Stefanie Reissner investigates change and learning through the comparative and contextual analysis of organisational stories. This timely and important book focuses on: how organisational actors make sense of, and learn from, profound change as exemplified by three manufacturing firms from Britain, South Africa and Russia the interaction between organisational change and wider social, economic and political changes in the organisations' environments; their impact on the organisational actors' identity is also examined the complex responses to organisational change epitomised by patterns of stories prevalent in each of the three organisations, as well as important insights into often unacknowledged narrative processes of learning which result from profound change. This comprehensive, in-depth account will be warmly welcomed by academics and postgraduates, particularly MBA and doctoral students interested in organisational change, learning, and qualitative research, and will also appeal to management educators and management consultants.

Table of Contents:
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Change, Learning, Narrative and Making Sense 3. Frontiers of Change 4. The World of Organisational Stories 5. Personal Experiences of Change 6. Competing Stories 7. Conclusion Methodological Appendix References Index

About the Author :
Stefanie Reissner, Durham University, UK

Review :
'. . . the book is particularly useful for scholars, students and educators. . . Narratives of Organisational Change and Learning makes a worthwhile contribution to the literature in this field.' 'It is a rare pleasure to read a monograph that uses organisational stories and storytelling as the main vehicles for analysing how people handle organisational and personal change in moments of rapid social and technological transformation. Instead of getting bogged down in questions of ontology and epistemology, Stefanie Reissner has produced a compelling narrative that uses the voices of her respondents in a sensitive, serious and sophisticated manner to reveal not only how people cope with changes in their working lives but also some of the costs of these changes.'