The role of stories and storytelling in organizational change efforts: The anthropology of an intervention within a UK hospital

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Bate, Paul

Affiliations: CHIME, Royal Free and University College Medical School, University College London, 4th Floor Holborn Union Building, The Archway Campus, Highgate Hill, London N19 5LW, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The interruption, interrogation and transformation of language is the basis of change in organizations, and the medium through which this occurs is 'stories'. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of a UK hospital change team, the article illustrates the power and centrality of narrative and counter-narrative in organizational diagnosis, critique and intervention. Stories were found to play a crucial role at every stage of the change journey: helping individual actors to tune-in and find a place for themselves on that journey; building collective identity and a community of practice between participants; critiquing and stigmatizing the present as a way of reframing and building a springboard for the future; and actually energizing and mobilizing people for action. Even though stories are central to the whole change experience, their significance has not been adequately highlighted in the organizational change literature. Strongly embedded as they are in the anthropological tradition, they represent an area in which this particular discipline could make a distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of organizational intervention and transformation.

Journal: Intervention Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 27-42, 2004