Narrative‐based Practice

Citation

Donaldson, R. (2009), "Narrative‐based Practice", Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 250-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/09565690910999247

The cover‐notes on this book promise an explanation of “the concept of storytelling or narrative‐based practice in teaching, research, professional practice and organisations”. As a narrative‐based practitioner with more than ten years experience I was really looking forward to reading it and learning some new techniques and ideas.

The first two chapters seem to me to be where Brophy's real interests lie. They are well written and leave the reader much more satisfied that they are exploring their subject through a wide range of different perspectives. They are also much less reliant on overlong, disconnected quotes than subsequent chapters.

The fifth chapter on knowledge management (KM) also covers a lot of very relevant research and key ideas but, just as it reaches the point where KM began to overlap with narrative methods, the chapter ends prematurely.

In the chapter on Narrative in Organisations a lot more could have been discussed and analysed. The BBC has some great examples of digital storytelling in Wales. Perhaps with a little narrative research the author might have discovered “Why are organisations so fearful of Facebook, blogging and Twitter, what dangerous narrative do they contain?”. I would have liked to have seen more simply constructed case studies or better still straightforward narratives about organisations that have succeeded or, even better, failed in there attempts at engaging in narrative‐based practices.

I truly feel that Brophy has missed a prime opportunity to summarise and make recommendations for anyone new to the use of narrative in organisations, but I am afraid that gap in the market still exists. Reading between the lines I can see just what Brophy was aiming at but I was repeatedly disappointed by what felt like disjointed, loosely connected references and quotes strung together to make up the word count.

It is interesting how a book like this can be written without reference to individuals and organisations that I would consider essential to cover. Organisations such as Ark‐Group, Unicom and Melcrum are synonymous with narrative and KM as are individuals such as Snowden1 and Denning2, who Brophy references but on fringe topics way outside their major influence in this subject area, and David Gurteen3, not referenced once but synonymous across the world with knowledge cafes which are only fleetingly commented upon. There is no mention of practitioner‐based companies such as Narrate, Anecdote and Narrative Lab4 or blogs such as “A storied career”, “Cognitive Edge” and “Anecdote”5, or any reference to the eco‐bardic, environmental storytelling movements. Perhaps this is a symptom of perspective as Brophy seems more at home referencing published scientific papers than business articles, news items, blogs, wikis and twitters. I do however accept that this might be partly due to successful attempts to avoid plagiarism in avoiding direct overlap with other researchers/practitioners' work.

It is a strange paradox that books on narrative are often not written using the very skills they promote. I longed to read about how Brophy first became interested narrative, his first attempts at working in the field or an example of that perfect teaching story about something interesting that happened; but instead, as each “story” unfolded I was left untouched and disappointed. This is where ex‐journalists have the upper hand with books like Tipping Point (Gladwell, 2000) and Freakonomics(Levitt and Dubner, 2006) because they understand and fully utilise the entrancement of narrative.

Three very useful appendices follow the final chapter, which to my mind should have been in the heart of the book where the techniques could have been properly introduced and elaborated on how they might be used, together with examples of interpretation and outcome. Instead they are tucked on the end as an afterthought.

The predominance of published papers from the late 1990s gives the book an outdated base. I guess the problem with a book of this type is that the preparation and production time mean that it is almost out of date by the time it is published but where are the references to Twitter, RSS feeds, narrative databases and narrative fragments currently exciting researchers in this field?

In summary this book takes a very academic approach and is a detailed trawl through the research and ideas of a lot of relevant thinking but is far from complete and should have been more up to date.

References

Gladwell, M. (2000), Tipping Point, Little Brown, London.

Levitt, S.D. and Dubner, S.J. (2006), Freakonomics, Penguin, London.

Notes

David Snowden, available at: www.cognitive‐edge.com/

Steve Denning, available at: http://kmedge.org/int/stevedenning.html

David Gurteen, available at: www.gurteen.com/

Narrate (www.narrate.co.uk), Anecdote (www.anecdote.com.au) and Narrative Lab (www.narrativelab.com).

A storied career (www.astoriedcareer.com/), Cognitive Edge (www.cognitive‐edge.com/blogs/index.php) and Anecdote (www.anecdote.com.au/index.php).