Dealing with Unusual Experiences: A Narrative Perspective on Organizational Learning

Raghu Garud (), Roger L. M. Dunbar () and Caroline A. Bartel ()
Additional contact information
Raghu Garud: Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania 16802
Roger L. M. Dunbar: Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012
Caroline A. Bartel: McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Organization Science, 2011, vol. 22, issue 3, 587-601

Abstract: Experiences that do not fit squarely into known categories pose a challenge to notions of organizational learning that rely primarily on scientific or experiential approaches. Making sense of, responding to, and learning from such unusual experiences requires reflection and novel action by organizational actors. We argue that narrative development processes make this organizational learning possible. By developing narratives, organizational actors create situated understandings of unusual experiences, negotiate consensual meanings, and engage in coordinated actions. Through the accumulation of narratives about unusual experiences, an organization builds a memory with generative qualities. Specifically, through narratives, actors evoke memories of prior unusual experiences and how they were dealt with, and this generates new options for dealing with emerging unusual experiences. We outline a framework detailing how narrative development processes enable organizational learning from unusual experiences and conclude by summarizing how this approach differs from and yet builds upon scientific and experiential approaches to learning.

Keywords: organizational learning; narratives; memory; knowledge; unusual experiences; emergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1100.0536 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:22:y:2011:i:3:p:587-601

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().