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The purpose of this paper is to self‐reflexively deconstruct a paper published by the author in 1996 about a Singaporean entrepreneur for whom the author worked. Through the deconstruction a number of important methodological and epistemological issues are raised. Firstly, the way in which the value of qualitative research in management and organization studies is judged more by how it conforms to acceptable ways of data collection, analysis and interpretation (strategic apparatus) than on any “truth” value it may have. Secondly, a consideration of how the “I” of the researcher is influential in how research is undertaken and written up. Thirdly, that this “I” of the researcher is also determined by what is acceptable “scientific” discourse and by other prevailing discourses.

In a paper published in 1996, the author detailed the “dark side” of an entrepreneur for whom he worked. Using a psychoanalytic framework this paper constructed the entrepreneur as an irrational and unethical incompetent. In the present paper, this earlier work is deconstructed using insights from Derrida's in order to highlight “strategic exclusions,” and to offer alternative readings. These alternative readings emphasize the influence of various discourses on the construction of the earlier paper, and also introduce a reading of the earlier paper as a psychoanalytic narrative.

The paper highlights the uses to which “objective tools” of analysis can be put in order to manipulate and construct an explanation and interpretation of personal experiences. This raises important epistemological issues concerning the influence of broader discourses on the representation of experiences and how realities and identities are constructed and performed. The paper concludes by suggesting that whom we are as researchers, and what we observe and write, is more complex and influenced by more discourse(s) than we might think. Even if researchers tell impressionistic and confessional tales simultaneously with their realist ones, it is necessary to consider what discourses may lay behind their telling. It has been argued that a limitation of deconstruction is that it may result in endless iterations and readings of text with no discursive closure. This may be a limitation of the deconstruction offered here.

The paper raises questions about the nature of the “academic” narrative and the importance of deconstruction in establishing author positioning within narrative. It contributes to the discussion about objectivity in organizational and management research and issues of epistemology and ontology more generally.

In this chapter, Sande Leadership will be introduced as an approach to getting leaders beyond the dominant narrative to a balance between authentic-self and stakeholder needs. Gender roles, ethics, norms and values, and political skills have become dominant narratives for various industries and their leadership addressed by the Sande Leadership model.

The model is an area of opportunity that addresses management social sustainability. Leadership development in management education will be the focus in the classroom, and leadership professional development will be the focus in organizations. In both industries, policy development for sustainable practice will be explored in the development of business scorecards used to measure sustainable practice in organizations.

The paper articulates common organizing narratives which recur within alternative movements in law, and posits the art of dispute resolution as an experimental reconstructive methodology for engaging conflicts, while incorporating a critique of classical liberal thought. The paper offers a reading of conflict resolution approaches, including Alternative Dispute Resolution; Therapeutic Jurisprudence; Restorative Justice, and Transitional Justice, in search of a new legal culture or jurisprudence which emerges from the following narratives: emphasis on process; emphasis on constructive conflict intervention; deconstruction and hybridization; a search for an underlying layer; emphasis on relationship and acknowledgment of emotions; community work and bottom-up development.

This paper has two purposes. First, I offer a reading of interpretive biography (Denzin, 1989a) as an alternative method for understanding how individual lives are rendered meaningful in postmodern communication processes. Second, given the importance of many rock performers as cultural heroes, I present an interpretive biography of Pete Townshend, chief songwriter and most visible member of the classic rock band the Who. This method of inquiry is grounded in the more general tradition of interpretive interactionism (Denzin, 1989b, 1990a) and has its roots in C. Wright Mills's (1959) concept of the sociological imagination. Its guiding question is this: How is the postmodern self (or stated more accurately, selves) created within and sustained by the mass media? I argue that as postmodern cultural symbols, Townshend and the band (however ambiguously) mirror a collective search for identity on the part of audiences and society-at-large.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a framework for researching the possibilities for project manager identities: the multiple ways there are of being a performer, as a manager, in the world of projects.

The author's line of enquiry was to seek evidence of project manager identity within real‐life stories told by practitioners, the author's perspective being: that identity is produced through action, that action and identity are framed by social narratives, and that identities and the strategies that create and support them are therefore evident in project stories.

Two examples are discussed; they validate the proposed research framework, demonstrating how storytellers use their projects as vehicles for the performance of their personal professional “project manager identity”.

The form of the stories is crucial to what their analysis can reveal about identities. The personal stories (narrating the storyteller's own experience) must be, in essence, complete, told by individuals addressing situations that challenge them.

The primary purpose of this research is to inform personal learning and educational programmes. An enriched understanding of what it means to be a professional in the project world can enhance the awareness of individuals learning to perform roles, and making choices in this field.

The analysis of stories has been used previously as a research methodology to critique projects and power structures. This paper makes proposals to extend the use of such analysis into the realm of personal identity and its construction.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce narrative construction, a method by which participants produce a narrative to make sense of their organizational context, as well as strategically guide action and decision making. While narrative theory has long‐held that people construct narratives to make sense of, and guide, their experience, narrative construction here entails a deliberate and strategic approach to narrative theory.

This is part of an ethnonarrative approach that includes both a constructionist and interpretive narrative and ethnographic methodology.

Narrative construction has research implications for an ethnomethodology of social construction and empirical observation of narrative enactment. There are practical implications for enabling change and building highly‐coordinated organizations.

Narrative construction offers a new qualitative methodology and extends ethnonarrative research. The research setting, a death penalty defense team, is also unique. It also moves narrative theory beyond an interpretive device to a constructionist strategy.

Despite recent developments in the sociology of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a critical analysis of the apparent affinity between CAM and nursing has, to date, remained essentially undeveloped. An empirical project is currently being conducted as an initial step to address the absence of such important critical research. A total of 30 written life history narratives were obtained from nurses working with and using CAM to explore such matters as professional boundaries and nurses' authentication strategies and conceptualisation and operationalisation of CAM. This paper addresses questions and conflicts that arose as the analytical tools were considered for these narrative accounts. Specifically, the paper explores whether the storied narrative sits easily with a critically oriented sociology of CAM; the differences between the role of “storyteller” or “story analyst”; and ask whether there is potential for developing a critical sociology of CAM nursing that retains the essence of personal stories.

This paper aims to critically focus on the UK's People & Planet's “green league table” in order to explore to what extent such league tables contribute to the transitional and transdisciplinary challenge of ecological sustainability for universities.

By taking a narrative and metaphorical perspective, the paper endeavours to understand how the green league table impacts on university greening, particularly around the apparent disengagement of academic and non‐academic actors in their bio‐cultural connection.

The paper conceptualizes the ecological sustainability challenge for universities by arguing that current sustainability managerial agendas and narratives, promoted by league tables are underpinned by what is conceptualized as the primacy of the “greenwashing glass cage” organisational metaphor. This highlights the self‐serving nature of sustainability approaches by managerial technocrats, consisting of carbon officers, sustainability managers predominantly based in estates departments. Drawing on the immediacy and “common‐sense”, doomsday imperative and legitimacy of the climate change agenda rather than embracing the wider inherent social, environmental and economic stakeholder conflicts and systemic bio‐cultural engagement challenges of sustainability, this top‐down, punitive, self‐satisfied approach around carbon targets and performance measures self‐perpetuates the myth that sustainable universities contribute effectively to the wider ecological challenge.

This paper not only offers a critique and warning against the blind adherence to league tables within university but also proposes a new grounded bio‐cultural and defamiliarizing narrative for universities. This narrative represents a more inclusive, non‐instrumental, contextual, experiential approach to ecological sustainability.

This paper seeks to examine the value of teaching about mental illness through the use of literature.

Using the examples of two colleges in eastern USA that focus on educating students for healthcare careers, the paper examines two different course formats for using literature to teach about mental illness: a course that places the topic within the larger context of medicine and literature; and a freestanding madness and literature course.

While professional education tends towards specialization, it can lead to a monocultural vision that limits approaches to patients and problems alike. Courses integrating mental illness and literature were found to be effective means of counteracting this trend.

The study is limited to two healthcare‐centred colleges in eastern USA.

For mental health clinicians and healthcare professionals in general, literature broadens the scope of both perspectives and analytical tools for understanding mental disorders and responses to them.

While literature courses often contain such themes as mental illness, courses that truly integrate literature with mental illness meet a growing need for interdisciplinary education as a means of preparing more flexibly thinking healthcare professionals.

The article presents a historical narrative model designed to encourage analytical thinking. My historical narrative inquiry model (a) teaches procedural knowledge (the process of “doing” history); (b) enhances interpretative skills; (c) cultivates historical perspectives based upon evidentiary history; and (d) encourages student authorship of historical narratives. The instructional model emphasizes small- and large-group activities, including oral presentations, discussions about primary documents, and considerations relative to the creation of written history. Students generate their own historical narratives in order to articulate their perspectives. The purpose of the model is to facilitate students’ historical understandings by developing more empathetic perceptions of the people of the past.