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This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making “invisible” intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants.

A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative.

Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way.

These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for “material” or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance.

This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators.

The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies.

The “Corporate Story” was written to provide organizations with a starting block for developing their company's strategic message. This paper aims to address this issue.

The paper presents an ideological framework for developing your corporate story, and provides recommendations for ensuring that it rings true. It uses organizational action as proof that a company is living its story, rather than just saying it is so.

The concept of using leadership to develop organizational messaging draws on research of human memory capabilities to identify structures for messaging that are both meaningful and memorable. The “Corporate Story” identifies means for ensuring that your strategy resonates with targeted groups.

The “Corporate Story” proposes the concept of employees acting as characters in a plot, and seeks to align leadership around consistent messaging.

The story is ultimately intended to engage employees in the company vision and result in a more productive workforce. The concept of a “corporate story” is new in as much as this paper seeks to define the values that a company's story reflects, and develops a framework for how to bring your story to life within a company. Creating employee “buy‐in” in an organization is no easy task, this paper discusses how not to detract from the meaning of your story by living the ideals which it presents.

A recent area of academic interest within corporate branding and reputation is the use of storytelling in order to differentiate the corporate brand, however there is little empirical research exploring the contents of corporate stories, and how they are used by organisations to build the corporate brand. This paper aims to utilise impression management theory to bring insight into the potential role of corporate stories in shaping the corporate brand.

Corporate stories were identified from the web sites of 99 organisations in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, and content analysis conducted on the stories, using a deductive approach to identify the story elements present in the stories.

There are wide variations in the inclusion of different elements in the stories, indicating that organisations place greater importance on the inclusion of some elements in their corporate stories than others.

The paper highlights the point that while organisations are using corporate stories, they are not sufficiently leveraging them to build their corporate brand. There is a gap between storytelling theory and practice, in that the literature emphasises the importance of including benefits for stakeholders, emotion, and aspects of the corporate strategy in stories, whereas organisations frequently neglect these aspects and instead focus mainly on their accomplishments.

This study has found impression management theory to be a useful perspective on exploring corporate storytelling, and identifies links between the elements of stories and impression management strategies and behaviours. This indicates that the corporate story could influence the impressions that audiences form of the organisation and therefore build the corporate brand.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of a storytelling teaching method in a company law course for accounting students and to evaluate its influence on engagement and effective learning.

The learning activity, known as “corporate villains”, is based on theories of storytelling and engagement. Selected qualitative and quantitative data from university course and teaching evaluation surveys were used to assess the achievement of objectives and identify learning outcomes.

The corporate villains learning activity engaged students at the beginning of the lecture and influenced student learning by demonstrating the relevance, or “real life” application, of company law to accounting students. Corporate villains also stimulated curiosity in learning more about the law which is characteristic of students pursuing a deep approach to learning.

The study extends the research on storytelling in accounting and legal education and supports empirical evidence as to the positive impact of storytelling on student engagement in learning. In particular, the study reveals the potential for corporate villains to address various academic and student concerns about company law by humanising the law and enabling students to connect the legal concepts to the story and to the curriculum.

This paper aims to present theoretical and empirical foundations for the use of a particular type of narrative skillfully deployed by senior leaders in an organization as an effective tool for creating, disseminating and executing corporate strategy.

The paper presents original research on the effectiveness of the use of a “springboard story” as a leadership tool.

Data are presented to substantiate that a “springboard story” presentation of corporate strategy and competitive advantage is more effective at producing a consistent and confident choice of competitive advantage among an audience than a presentation of corporate strategy using a PowerPoint style, bulleted list approach. Theoretical implications for leaders leading change, especially change in corporate strategy, are suggested.

The paper explores the implications for the practical use of this type of narrative in strategy implementation and execution by leaders.

The purpose of this article is to improve our understanding of the nature of social responsibility in actual practices and, specifically, the influence of individuals on these processes.

An abductive approach is applied (Alvesson and Sköldberg 1994), i.e. theory is developed by moving between theory and four empirical cases. The stories highlight the importance of the individual and closeness to local stakeholders and the presence of overlapping rationales.

The individuals’ simultaneous roles – as owners, managers and community members – influence how they are held or see themselves as accountable and how they account for the firms’ engagement in the community. The activities are conducted in the name of the firm but originate from private as well as business-oriented concerns. Our conclusions encourage an extension of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) construct to approach it as an entangled phenomenon resulting from the firm and the individual embeddedness in internal and external cultures.

This study brings the individual managers and owner-managers into focus and how their interplay with the surrounding context can create additional dimensions of accountability, which impact on the decisions taken in regard to CSR. A micro-perspective is applied. Corporate community responsibility, particularly in smaller and rural communities, contributes to recognize and understand how individuals influence and are influenced by CSR.

Storytelling is claimed to be an effective way of communicating corporate strategy within organisations. However, previous studies have tended to focus holistically on storytelling in organisations rather than investigating how different groups may use and be influenced by stories. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps in the literature by investigating how storytelling in internal communication can either support or subvert corporate strategy.

A qualitative study was conducted into storytelling in two large companies in the UK energy industry. Data were collected through 70 semi-structured interviews, documentary research, and observation research. Impression management theory was used to analyse how stories supported or subverted corporate strategy.

Storytelling by employees in the corporate and customer service areas of the organisations showed the greatest support for corporate strategy. There was more subversive storytelling in the operational areas, particularly by lower level employees. Stories subverted corporate strategy by recounting incidents and encouraging behaviour that contradicted the organisation’s vision/goals and values.

The study shows the important contribution of employees to the collective sensemaking process in organisations, by narrating supportive or subversive stories. Engaging employees in storytelling can enhance support for corporate strategy, however, managers should also see subversive stories as an opportunity to identify and address problems in the organisation.

Presents a case study of a new approach to collective storytelling in companies using a highly participative approach in order to create believable and authentic corporate films. An Australian company in the process industry had undergone a large‐scale organizational change project; in order to disseminate the experiences and knowledge gained during the project a corporate film was produced that told the story of the change project. The story and dialogue have been developed by the employees involved in the change project, and shop‐floor workers were cast as the characters of the film. The resulting corporate film has been highly accepted by the employees, who considered it a true and believable representation of their collective experience. Therefore corporate films produced with high levels of employee involvement and participation can provide a powerful and efficient means to capture and disseminate organizational knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to address corporte social responsibility (CSR) as a form of corporate self‐storying that highlights isomorphic processes influencing legitimacy as a key organisational concern.

Having constructed a theoretical framework incorporating CSR and corporate identity literature, the paper draws on a discourse perspective to analyse the legitimation strategies applied by a single organisation storying its CSR involvement. The strategies are subsequently addressed in relation to isomorphic discourses of legitimacy.

The analysis supports the view that corporate self‐storying of CSR balances between the needs for differentiation and conformity. Organisations thus navigate between the value associated with compliance with societal norms and expectations and the value of promoting organisational uniqueness.

Institutional processes result in isomorphic organisational practices also in relation to legitimacy reflected in the storying of CSR involvement. However, this study implies that isomorphism also offers organisations opportunities to stand out.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it articulates a framework for addressing CSR communication as a form of corporate self‐storying that is embedded in a differentiation/conformity paradox. Second, it explores how an organisation's extended responsibility – i.e. responsibility for supplier practices – is storied in a way that suggests that addressing legitimacy is a question of navigating the paradox.

This case study is informed by a call for new ways to analyse the enactment of organisational culture using discourse analysis and researcher reflexivity. The colliding research approaches used in this paper open up cultural symbolic data for analysis in ways that allow participants to reflect on their own organisational experiences. The methodology that is employed examines corporate culture narrative from a multifaceted viewpoint to show ways in which organisations seek to maintain their structure and identity in the marketplace. The study draws on narrative and performance methods to show how perceptions about organisational reality can be reinterpreted and communicated in the context of corporate cultural identity and enterprise risk management.