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The objective of this paper is to develop practice and theory from Augusto Boal's dialogue technique (Image Theatre) for organisational use. The paper aims to examine how the members in an organisation create dialogue together by using a dramaturgical storytelling framework where the dialogue emerges from storytelling facilitated by symbolic representations of still images.

The study follows the lines of participatory action and art‐based research. The data are collected from 13 dramaturgical work story storytelling sessions in four different organisations. The research design belongs to the tradition of research‐based theatre, which implies artful inquiry, scripting and performance in research.

The paper presents a model for organisational dialogue. The model illustrates the dramaturgical storytelling of work story which influences problem shifting in a positive way.

The limitations of this study are related to the scope of the research. The Scandinavian cultural context facilitates an open, bottom up process. More case studies in different kinds of environments should be conducted. In the future it might be advantageous to conduct more longitudinal studies on how organisations can nurture continuous dialogue.

Work story as a dialogue practice facilitated members from the same occupational groups to share experiences with each other and construct common interests by investigating unstructured and uncertain social situations at work.

The paper combines research fields that explore art‐based initiatives within organisations, workplace learning and innovation research.

This article examines personal performances of vicarious trauma (VT) related to the Ocean Ranger Disaster. It investigates the extent to which the self is at stake in passionate storytelling about tragic consequences of extreme work.

Dramaturgical concepts of self-presentation and impression management are used as a qualitative lens to provide an alternative view of published trauma stories arising from emotional research interviews.

The catastrophic disaster created secondary traumatization for families and friends of extreme workers lost at sea. This article shows that research interviews of these disaster survivors are opportunities for participants to engage in dramatic storytelling. The paper also reflects on related (problematic) storytelling by the trauma researcher.

The article provides a theory illustration using dramaturgy as an alternative theoretical perspective to document previously under-appreciated aspects of the Ocean Ranger case. The discussion causes us to think about research interviews in a way that past research would not normally suggest.

The Ocean Ranger Disaster continues to be a remarkable source of sorrow for the people of Newfoundland. This research provides a needed contrast to the numerous positivist, and overwhelmingly technological, studies of the disaster.

The research tradition of dramaturgy is a useful lens to apply to the expanding field of trauma studies. VT is rarely a subject of direct discussion in the management and organization studies (MOS) literature. This paper is among the first to consider storytelling interviews from a VT perspective.

In exploring the impact of reflective and work applied approaches, the authors are curious how vivid new insights and collective “Eureka” momentums occur. These momentums can be forces for work communities to gain competitive advantages. However, the authors know little of how learning is actively involved in the processing of creating new insights and how such a turning to learning mode (Pässilä and Owens, 2016) can be facilitated. In the light of cultural studies and art education, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the method of dramatising characters (DC) in a specific innovation culture can be facilitated. In this viewpoint, the authors are suggesting one approach for this type of turning to learning which the authors call Beyond Text, outlining its theoretical underpinnings, its co-creative development and its application.

In this Beyond Text context, the authors are introducing the method of DC and the method of iStory both of which are the authors’ own design based on the theory of the four existing categories of a research-based theatre.

The findings of this viewpoint paper are that both iStory as well as DC methods are useful and practical learning facilitation processes and platforms that can be adopted for use in organisations for promoting reflexivity. Especially they can act as a bridge between various forms of knowing and consummate the other knowledge types (experiential, practical and propositional) in a way that advances practice-based innovation.

The originality and value of iStory and DC is that they can be utilised as dialogical evaluation methods when traditional evaluation strategies and pre-determined indicators are unusable.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply Goffman's dramaturgical perspective to the study of organizations in the context of their internet presence(s), or as Goffman might have called it, internet play-acting. The paper responds to recent criticism of dramaturgy, and advocates its continuing relevance for organizational studies on the contemporary stage – the internet.

The paper studies the proposed merger of three accounting bodies in Canada using data obtained from publically available sources and employing dramaturgical techniques. Data includes documents (such as position papers, PowerPoint slides and practitioner journal articles). Particular attention was paid to sources of data from the internet such as YouTube videos, web sites, on-line media stories and chat from discussion boards.

The paper concludes that the criticisms of dramaturgy are overstated, and that dramaturgy enables robust recovery of complex organizational stories providing insights into how and why individual behaviour unfolds in organizations.

The paper is directed to qualitative researchers working in the interpretive tradition. It engages with the recent discussion in the literature which considers the significance of dramaturgy as a useful methodology to understand the emergence of behaviour and action, and how internet activities unfold in such a powerful and ubiquitous communication medium.

The knowledge management (KM) models in the African organisations are influenced by the interplay between human agents from diverse societies whose experiences, values, contextual information and insights that are perceived controversial in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the indigenous assumptions related to knowledge and its management in Africa and the perceived contradictions in the existing models by adopting the Ubuntu philosophy.

The authors used a perspective lens to examine the existing management practices and propose an integrated framework that is appropriate for the utilisation of the Ubuntu epistemic knowledge management practices and at the same time provide highlights on the perceived paradoxes and how they can be managed to improve knowledge management and people management in African societies.

The inductive posteriori knowledge approach is perceived to be dynamic, applicable and more desirable in the African societies as it allows organisational managers and their work teams to embrace knowledge construction, dependent on experiences in form of stories and metaphors that demonstrate successful work samples. The Ubuntu dramaturgical knowledge management approach adds value to the posteriori knowledge by refining the rhetoric stories and metaphors into empirical performance scripts that are tailored to the audiences’ expectations.

The paper adapted a perspective view to explain knowledge management; therefore, it was not possible to provide empirical data on the metaphysical and dramaturgical elements that are assumed to influence knowledge management in Africa. However, based on theoretical analysis, the authors have proposed a coherent knowledge management framework based on the interaction between posteriori KM assumptions and Ubuntu dramaturgy.

Ubuntu ideology has been appreciated since it treasures interdependency and interconnectedness among people. Therefore, collaborating partners working in Africa would be expected to act as interdependent agents, whereby this interdependency is perceived as an integral part of the knowledge management process. The proposed Ubuntu knowledge management model is grounded on the posteriori knowledge approach which assumes that experience is the source of knowledge. Through social interactions and experiences sharing, organisational members can create new processes, innovative technologies and dynamic context based performance scripts that can drive productivity.

The authors concluded that a coherent framework that is tailored to social interactions and contextual needs of the people and their communities can promote productive knowledge and knowledge management systems in the African contexts. Moreover knowledge management requires one to acknowledge the complexity of Ubuntu ideology in a sense that it recognises the past experiences and contributions of the diverse individuals in the same community/organisation.

This paper focused on examining how the Ubuntu philosophy can promote knowledge development and management strategies that are tailored to social and contextual needs of the organisations in Africa to curtail the perceived paradoxes in the existing knowledge management models.

This paper aims to investigate a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications in a business network with regard to the flow of critical events related to CSR.

The paper focuses on the drama that unfolded at a Nordic-based multinational corporation, Stora Enso, after a critical event related to CSR and the specific signs and codes applied by the company to justify its actions. To achieve the aims, the authors conducted a dramaturgical and semiotic analysis of the company’s corporate communications in connection with various actions prior to or following the major critical event.

The findings consist of a five-act drama that unfolded around certain CSR communication activities at the company. The authors followed the company’s shift in communication strategy as they were compelled to adopt a more responsive and involved approach. The results also show the roles of the various business network actors in shaping CSR communications.

This case has practical uses for providing the framework to create effective messages at different stages of the communication process related to a major CSR event.

The originality of the study lies in its application of a dramaturgical and semiotic approach to the analysis of CSR communication. It also contributes to the scarce literature on CSR communication within business networks.

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.

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 history of Organizational Development (OD) reveals a much older tradition of organizational science than the conventional wisdom would suggest. By the 1960s and 1970s OD became self‐confident and dynamic. This period was not only highly experimental but established the principles of OD for much of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century new images of OD had occurred and much of the earlier thinking had been transformed. This review illustrates some examples under a series of themes that have had a major impact on the discipline of OD and on the wider thinking of organizational theorists and researchers.

The purpose of this article is to offer a new perspective on library instruction by examining its relationship with various aspects of theatrical performance.

The author uses personal observations as inspiration to examine what has been written in scholarly literature about various theatrical practices in instruction, applying the conversation to the library instruction context. Additionally, research from business and professional literature is also incorporated into the discussion. This literature review focuses on three general areas. First, a review on how to use tools and perspectives from the theater to help librarians prepare their lessons; second, an examination of the librarian as performer; and third, a discussion on how theater might help librarians deal with repetition and burnout.

The literature on this subject has been extensive and includes an all-encompassing range of practical suggestions, research findings and theoretical analyses.

This article looks at this subject through the lens of scholarly literature. Empirical research on this topic is still needed.

The author presents a number of theatrical practices librarians might consider incorporating into their instruction sessions.

Much has been written about the connection between teaching and theatrical performance, but seldom from a librarian’s point of view. This article is of value to librarians looking to develop a memorable one-shot instruction session and those looking to examine the connection between teaching and performance.