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Article
Publication date: 22 July 2019

Jacob A. Massoud, David M. Boje, Elizabeth Capener and Marilu Marcillo

This paper aims to offer an analysis of the British Petroleum (BP) Prudhoe Bay environmental disaster. The primary purpose is to elucidate the fivefold of antenarrative in…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to offer an analysis of the British Petroleum (BP) Prudhoe Bay environmental disaster. The primary purpose is to elucidate the fivefold of antenarrative in sensemaking environmental accidents. The analytic framework enables organization to envision futures where they want to be, and work to get there as more socially responsible companies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an intertextual analysis of texts by ascribing voice and affiliation to each antenarrative. The multiple voices and antenarratives quoted within the texts were compared and coded and theme analysis was conducted over time to understand dynamics and see if organizational learning was occurring.

Findings

The antenarrative method generated several findings: BP is faulty beneath in how they conceive of safety, lacking foresight. BP executives leave out elements of safety, a fore having that does not include what needs to be prepared for. BP foretells that it is socially responsible, yet the reality of events seems contradictory. Within fore structure, some of BP’s leaders deny or ignore claims of critics through intertextual connections of events. By fore caring, BP mediates the problem in response to the disaster and critics. Their sensemaking in this case is more retrospective and reactive than prospective.

Practical implications

Organizations can avoid environmental disasters and negative backlash by adopting practices that provide more transparent discourse and greater accountability. The fivefold of antenarrative serves as a storytelling framework to promote care by using trial and error problem solving on future bets.

Originality/value

To date, few intertextual analyses have been performed to study organizations. By applying a fivefold antenarrative storytelling framework, which reflects new advances in storytelling theory, the authors offer an original perspective on environmental accident sensemaking.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 27 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1946

W.R. LE FANU

The only comprehensive list of British medical libraries hitherto available has been that in The Aslib directory 1928, and there is an extended account of those in London in…

Abstract

The only comprehensive list of British medical libraries hitherto available has been that in The Aslib directory 1928, and there is an extended account of those in London in Reginald Rye, The students' guide to the libraries of London (3rd ed., 1927), pp. 362–77. The new list, here put forward, is intended to bring the information from those two books of reference up to date, after nearly twenty years. British libraries are briefly listed among ‘Medical libraries outside North America’ in the Medical Library Association's A handbook of medical library practice, ed. Janet Doe, Chicago, American library association 1943, chapter 1, appendix 2, pages 41–64. The meagre information in that list, if contrasted with the detailed documentation of American and Canadian libraries in successive issues of the American medical directory, accentuates the need for us to know ourselves better. Several, perhaps many, medical librarians have had to compile lists of kindred libraries for their own convenience. A list which I had thus prepared seemed to Aslib to offer adequate basis for a Directory of British medical libraries, and in order to complete it Aslib issued a questionnaire in the autumn of 1944 to libraries known to possess medical collections and to hospitals, medical societies, and medical institutions throughout the British Isles. The information obtained from the generous response to this questionnaire is epitomized in the list which follows. I am responsible for all omissions and errors and I hope that those who detect any will supply corrections and additions so that this preliminary list may be revised and become a definitive Directory.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

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