This book is a collection of texts that explore the analogy between organizing and narrating, between action and text. The raw material of everyday organizational life consists of disconnected fragments, physical and verbal actions that do not make sense when reported with simple chronology. Narrating is organizing this raw and fragmented material with the help of such devices as plot and characters. Simultaneously, organizing makes narration possible, because it orders people, things and events in time and place. The collection, written by organization researchers from many different countries, explores this analogy in both directions, reporting studies that show how narratives are made in situ, and applying narrative analysis (structuralist and poststructuralist) to stories already in existence. Barbara Czarniawska is Skandia Professor of Management Studies at GRI, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden. Pasquale Gagliardi is Professor of Sociology of Organization at the Catholic University of Milan, and Managing Director of ISTUD- Istituto Studi Direzionali, Milan-Stresa, Italy.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction (by Czarniawska, Barbara); 2. Part 1: Structuralist approaches to narrative analysis; 3. Sensegiving and sensemaking in an integration process: A narrative approach to the study of an international acquisiton (by Soderberg, Anne-Marie); 4. Narrative institutions we organize by: The case of municipal administration (by Robichaud, Daniel); 5. Part 2: Poststructuralist approaches to narrative; 6. Re-navigating management theory: Steering by the star of Mary Follet (by Monin, Nanette); 7. The body of the text and the ordinary narratives of organisation (by Hopfl, Heather); 8. Part 3: Genre analysis; 9. How can strategy be a practice?: Between discourse and narration (by Ville, Valerie-Ines de la); 10. Narratives of organizational performance (by Corvellec, Herve); 11. Part 4: Stories help to understand; 12. The Schweik Syndrome: The narrative power of resistance by agreement (by Hirsch, Paul M.); 13. Detective stories and the narrative structure of organizing: Towards an understanding of organizations as texts (by Patriotta, Gerardo); 14. Part 5: Getting help from the stories of the future; 15. From naked emperor to count zero: Tracking knights, nerds and cyber-punks in identity narratives of freelancers in the IT-field (by Metz, David); 16. Narrating the future of intelligent machines: The role of science fiction in technological anticipation (by Bloomfield, Brian P.); 17. Part 6: Narrating ourselves; 18. Ticking time and side cupboard ...: The journey of a patient (by Sharifi, Sudi); 19. Fluid tales: A preservation of self in everyday life (by Small, Robert Grafton); 20. About the authors and the editors; 21. References; 22. Name index; 23. Subject index