Page 93 - Journal of Management Inquiry, July 2018

346 Journal of Management Inquiry 27(3)

Table 2. Modes and Tropes of Digital Organizational Storytelling.
Symbolic tropes and intertextual
Title Key protagonists Mode Poetic tropes references

The Meatrix Naive apprentice (Leo Epic story of a heroic Attribution of motive: The factory Corporation represented by
the pig); wise hero character who exposes farming industry as responsible Agri-Corp a multi-limbed
(Moopheus the cow); the illusion of family culprit robot and agents of The
evil villain (Agri-Corp farming and seeks to Attribution of emotion to central Meatrix—Men in black suits
and agents of The “liberate minds” so characters: Evil deeds committed Release coincides with the
Meatrix); hapless victims they know where their by men in suits final film in The Matrix
(the animals) food comes from. trilogy (1999-2003); human
Fights evil villain and enslavement to machines
saves animal victims translated into animal
from impending death. enslavement to machines. A
related narrative of good vs.
evil forces is used in Grocery
Store Wars which draws on
the Star Wars film franchise
The Story of Narrator (Annie Documentary story Attribution of motive: Corporation Hand-drawn, black and white
Stuff Leonard); evil villain (rhetorical form), a as responsible for unethical and stick figures denote childlike
(greedy, out-of-control narrator tells the story destructive social, environmental simplicity;
corporations); other simply but passionately and health effects; government Narrator, Annie Leonard,
protagonists (the and builds a persuasive responsible related to failure to dressed plainly in shirt and
government; the Third argument. Story ends control the corporation slacks, is represented in front
World; factories; Big by proposing a solution Attribution of causal connections: of a whiteboard, as though
Box Mart; employees; to the issues raised. Multiple incidents in narrative teaching;
consumers) linked together in cause/effect Inflated stick figure with dollar
relationship sign on body and top hat to
Attribution of unity and fixed represent the corporation;
qualities: Corporation as Pictorial arrows and flows
an undifferentiated, unified used to indicate causality and
category signified as having fixed attribute responsibility
characteristics (e.g., inherently
greedy)

from the storyteller and the story to the audience who them- Authenticity to me means it’s not just greenwashing. So you’re
selves become storytellers, rather than passive audiences to not just slapping a sticker on something to make it appear as if it
whom stories are told. Through this, the story not only were more environmentally or people friendly, you know, as if
becomes polyphonic, but is dialogized with multi-stylistic it’s more sustainable . . . if you’re just slapping a sticker on a
expressions, diverse configurations of time and space, and product or if you’re just glossing over the yukky stuff and
multiple interplays with varied social and cultural discourses pulling out a few highlights that are good, then that’s not
(Boje, 2008). Although Boje (2008, p. 3) describes such sto- authentic in my mind. Authentic is sincerely trying to have a
product or a cause that is good for people, planet and profits . . .
ries as “a rare and endangered species” in organizations, we As more and more companies want to reach into this kind of
suggest that in the context of digital organizational storytell- authentic sustainability world space, then we have to decide
ing, they are relatively common. This arises as a result of the whether or not we’re going to be willing to work for them and
power that resides in networks, as communicative structures there’s a wide range of opinions about Free Range about who
that rely on protocols of communication to process flows of you work for and how authentic they have to be . . . It’s really a
messages (Castells, 2009). slippery slope of authenticity.
A second protocol on which successful digital organiza-
tional storytelling depends is the evaluation of authenticity. The importance of evaluations of authenticity also encom-
Interviewees drew repeatedly on discourses of authenticity passes audiences who are described as “agents of authentic-
to describe their storytelling practices. When asked to ity” (Sachs, 2012) through their engagement with the impact
explain further, one respondent associated authenticity with of corporate practices on society. This includes participating
the moral purpose of storytelling in enabling distinction in conversations about the authenticity of digital stories, as
between right and wrong in evaluation of corporate social illustrated by these user-generated comments on the FRS
responsibility: website: