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Narrative Discourse and Management Action

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

An analysis of the language used by a management team suggests that narrative discourse helped resolve conflict, influence corporate decisions, and unify the group. By collectively constructing stories, managers made sense of the past, coped with the present, and planned for the future. Managers' preference for narrative reasoning reflected their beliefs that narrative conveyed contextual complexities and helped interpret other types of evidence, such as statistics. Lack of trust between the management team and corporate headquarters derived at least partially from different beliefs about what makes stories believable. Through individual and col lective narration, managers used imagination to transform experience and knowl edge into influence and action.

Key Words: Narrative • Story • Management • Reasoning • Discourse

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