This study examines how organizations may embed humanizing narrative devices and related activities in their management control systems to enact humanizing business practices. As defined here, narrative devices include complete stories as well as story fragments that may under certain circumstances invoke a shared narrative context. Humanizing narrative devices respect a person’s dignity and capacity for personal growth, respect human rights, promote care and service for others, and improve an organization’s ability to serve the common good rather than only narrow (...) special interests. The first section discusses the sense-making and action-guiding properties of narrative devices, and then discusses principles for applying them in a manner that respects others in a diverse workplace. The second section adapts Simons’ management accounting and control framework to trace interdependencies among an organization’s narrative devices and related activities. The third section applies the combined narrative devices and systems framework to illustrate how an actual company has articulated, debated, revised, and enacted its core values over time. The concluding section discusses the analysis, its contributions to the literature, and implications for future research. (shrink)

This article explains Iris Murdoch’s notion of moral vision and its importance as a basic concept within applied ethics. It does so by exploring the influence of Iris Murdoch upon Alasdair MacIntyre whose ideas are frequently discussed by business ethicists. Arguably, the British philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) who wrote – amongst others – Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals ( 1992 ), along with her contemporaries, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe, pioneered the resurgence of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Furthermore, Iris Murdoch (...) influenced Alasdair MacIntyre. Heather Widdows, in her biography of Iris Murdoch lists Alasdair MacIntyre amongst those ‘thinkers she inspired’ (Widdows, The moral vision of Iris Murdoch, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 2005 , p. 10). And in his writings MacIntyre does both examine Murdoch’s work and acknowledge that ‘Iris Murdoch has … put us all in her debt’ (MacIntyre, 1993 , The New York Times on the Web , January 3, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/20/specials/murdoch-metaphysics.html , p. 3). Murdoch was both an influential philosopher and a successful novelist. MacIntyre has stated that ‘Iris Murdoch’s novels are philosophy: but they are philosophy which casts doubt on all philosophy, including her own’ ( London Review of Books , 3–16 June, 1982 , p. 15). I therefore explore in this article the influence of Iris Murdoch’s literary work, where ‘true vision occasions right conduct’ upon Alasdair MacIntyre’s portrayal of us as ‘storytelling animals’ on a ‘narrative quest’. (shrink)

This article explains Iris Murdoch's notion of moral vision and its importance as a basic concept within applied ethics. It does so by exploring the influence of Iris Murdoch upon Alasdair Maclntyre whose ideas are frequently discussed by business ethicists. Arguably, the British philosopher Iris Murdoch who wrote -amongst others -Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, along with her contemporaries, Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe, pioneered the resurgence of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Furthermore, Iris Murdoch influenced Alasdair Maclntyre. Heather Widdows, in (...) her biography of Iris Murdoch lists Alasdair Maclntyre amongst those ' thinkers she inspired'. And in his writings Maclntyre does both examine Murdoch's work and acknowledge that ' Iris Murdoch has... put us all in her debt'. Murdoch was both an influential philosopher and a successful novelist. Maclntyre has stated that ' Iris Murdoch's novels are philosophy: but they are philosophy which casts doubt on all philosophy, including her own'. I therefore explore in this article the influence of Iris Murdoch's literary work, where ' true vision occasions right conduct' upon Alasdair Maclntyre's portrayal of us as ' storytelling animals' on a 'narrative quest'. (shrink)

Narrative is increasingly being recognised as an important tool both to manage and understand organisations. In particular, narrative is recognised to have an important influence on the perception of environmental issues in business, a particularly contested area of modern management. Management literature is, however, only beginning to develop a framework for evaluating the quality and legitimacy of narratives. Due to the highly fluid nature of narratives, the traditional notion of truth as reflecting ' objective reality' is not useful here. In (...) this article, an alternative approach that evaluates a narrative in two stages is developed. First, a horizontal reading investigates the surface of the narrative, its textual features, instrumental devices and its integrity as a text, to assess the quality of a narrative. Second, a more philosophical or vertical reading makes explicit the underlying value assumptions that author and reader bring to the writing and reading of the narrative to assess the narrative's claim to legitimacy. The framework is then tested against a narrative on the relationship between business and environment as espoused by a supply chain manager of a UK-based manufacturing company. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of legitimacy and, in particular the processes of building, losing, and repairing environmental legitimacy in the context of the Deepwater Horizon case. Following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in 2010, BP plc. was accused of having set new records in the degree of divergence between its actual operations and what it had been communicating with regard to corporate responsibility. Its legitimacy crisis is here to be appraised as a case study in the discrepancy between symbolic and (...) substantive strategies in corporate greening and its communication. A narrative analysis of BP’s “beyond petroleum”-rebranding and the “making this right”-campaign issued in response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster discusses their respective implications for corporate change. Further, the question is addressed why BP’s green image endeavors were so widely accepted at first, only to find themselves dismissed as corporate greenwashing now. The study concludes that where a corporation’s “green narrative” consistently evokes established narratives, its legitimacy will be judged against narrative, rather than empirical truth. Thus, the narrative will be more willingly accepted as speaking for the issuing company’s legitimacy, irrespective of whether it reflects substantive greening or not. (shrink)