Knowledge, Stories, and Culture in Organizations

Abstract

Organizations are full of stories; organizational economics, not so much. Rather, organizational economics has little work that conceptualizes the role or measures the incidence of stories in organizations. This shortage concerns us not only because stories are prevalent in organizations but more importantly because we think some stories play a role in organizations that sheds light on why organizations exist and how they might be improved. In brief, we explore the idea that stories in organizations may induce a particular kind of organizational knowledge, of which organizational culture is a leading example.