On the creation of organizational folk theories: An analysis of storytelling and language behavior

There were two interrelated purposes of this study: to discern how organizational language serves as a structuring process for meaning and to develop a strategy for synthesizing the levels of interpretation that emerge during the research process. To achieve these goals, a three-phase interpretive investigation of two information-management organizations was conducted. In the first phase of the study, the participants were asked to share organizational stories and their individual interpretations of the organizations. The origins and destinations of the organizational stories were traced in order to reveal networks of storytellers and story themes. The composite data (the language used in the organizational stories and the language used in the conversational descriptions of the organization) were analyzed, using Kenneth Burke\u27s method of indexing. In the second phase of the project, the organizational actors were asked to evaluate the results revealed through phase one. Based on their acceptances, rejections, and qualifications, the data were synthesized into the building blocks for the organizational folk theories that were the culmination of this research. In the final phase of this investigation, the organizational actors were again asked to evaluate the researcher\u27s inferences. Based on a synthesis of the data collected during this phase and the data collected throughout the investigation, organization-specific folk theories were identified. These folk theories provide guides for organizational action and promote an understanding of the way in which situations and events have been interpreted by the organizational actors. The analysis of the data was focused on the creation, transformation, and identification of meaning as it was interpreted by the organizational actors. The results of the study offer theoretical and methodological innovations for the field of organizational communication. Additionally, this investigation provides the impetus for additional research regarding meaning-centered studies of organizational storytelling and language behavior