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By recognizing high-stakes testing as a key constraint to teacher agency, this paper aims to provide a close analysis of one teacher’s testing narrative to illustrate how emerging positioning is relative to high-stakes testing shapes perception of pedagogical agency.

Data were generated through a series of semi-structured interviews with an early career fourth-grade teacher, Ms Moore, in a school facing pressure to raise test scores. Using theoretical lenses of narrative positioning and a linguistic anthropological centering of constraint and emergence, 67 narratives of accountability were analyzed, with particular focus on how Ms Moore positioned herself relative to other actors involved in high-stakes testing and the consequent rights and duties these positions afforded.

In narrating the constraints of high-stakes testing, Ms Moore positioned herself relative to three groups involved in high-stakes testing: “purposefully tricky” test creators, “disjointed” administrators and “worried” students. The rights and duties associated with three positions varied with respect to two dimensions – proximity and hierarchy – in turn providing her distinct resources for responding to the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing.

Teachers might use positioning analysis as a tool to locate possibilities for agency amidst high-stakes testing, both by exploring the resources afforded by their positioning and by considering how alternative positions might afford different resources.

These findings suggest that high-stakes testing serves as a dynamic and perhaps malleable constraint to teacher agency. Teacher positioning, particularly relative to hierarchy and proximity, provides possible resource for responding to such constraints.

The negative stereotypes concerning late-career workers are found to prevail and lead to negative circulation of narratives and actions between individuals and societies. Using the context of late-career entrepreneurs, the paper aims to find an alternative and a more positive narrative concerning late-career work by focusing on entrepreneurs and the narrative positioning related to them.

The authors used a narrative-positioning analysis, cycling through three levels of analysis and then returning to level two, in order to study our sample of seven narratives written by Finnish late-career entrepreneurs. The authors present in detail one story-telling narrative, by Matthew, and then layer the remaining six narratives to present themes, positioning and actions surrounding being a late-career entrepreneur.

A more positive narrative circulation was found, which related to the master narrative of entrepreneurs as continuing “until the end” and taking care of themselves, their enterprises and different stakeholder groups even after exiting the enterprise into so-called “retirement.” The entrepreneurs were found to actively use this positive narrative to position themselves both in the story-telling world and in their local interactions. By positioning themselves as “never ending caretakers,” the entrepreneurs gave a strong account that their reasons to continue working centered on the factors social.

The research findings and analysis should be interpreted in the context of the Nordic countries and especially Finland.

The results of this study can inform the ways in which these “never ending caretakers” can transition into retirement and adjust to life spent in retirement.

In the study, entrepreneurs' written answers were analyzed with narrative-positioning analyses. An alternative story of people at work was found, and a more positive narrative circulation was constructed based on their narratives.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodological demonstration of how written and visual language in narrative and small stories about older workers might be read in multiple ways as supporting and/or constraining recent policy reform.

Critical theory and critical discourse analysis, supported by narrative analysis and visual analysis, offer a robust methodology to problematize the manner in which textually mediated discourses impact social policy reform for recruiting, retraining and retaining older workers.

The results show that still in such an “age positive” social policy environment, negative stereotypes about older workers persist, threatening to constrain social change.

An exemplary analysis of two texts, representative of those related to Australian government initiatives to reform access to work for older citizens, provides an accessible means of (re)evaluating if and how such policies are more inclusive of older workers.

This paper contributes to an emerging trend in organization studies using a critical discourse analytic approach not only to written texts, but also to the less familiar visual narratives and stories.

The purpose of this paper is to address the relationships between gender and management in the narratives of students. More specifically, the authors discuss how the discourse on management is mobilized as a discursive practice able to make some form of that activity thinkable and practicable: who can be a CEO? What kind of managerial competencies are attributed to men/women CEOs? What kind of moral order is expressed in the stories told?

Stimulus texts have been used to elicit narratives. Students were asked to complete a short story regarding a fictive managerial character, either female or male, whose performance and attitude they were asked to evaluate.

The paper discusses how the collected stories as a whole expressed a conception of what counts as a “good manager” and how management is gendered. In the analysis, the authors discuss whether and how the relationships between gender and management are changing, or the basic assumptions about “think manager-think male” are still valid. The paper illustrates a traditional positioning of gendered management along the lines of rationality vs care, and a third positioning in which the ideal of the “good manager” has both competencies.

The authors designed an alternative research strategy focused on how gender and management are discursively constructed within a context of economic crisis that affects management reputation. Particularly, the authors discuss the surprising results concerning how the written stories evaluating male CEOs distrusted the masculine way of managing and positioned the female managing style within a trustworthy context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of managerial identity in management narratives. In particular, it applies these ideas critically to understand how managers' identities are partly shaped by the dominant discourse or idea about what a manager should “be.”

The paper draws on three written narratives of managers. It applies a dialogical approach to consider how they position themselves interactionally in the narratives in such a way as to highlight a managerial identity based on being “enterprising” and “for change,” while simultaneously voicing alternative identities negatively. The use of the written narratives of managers and the application of a dialogical approach is an important contribution to the literature.

The findings suggest that managers, when reflecting on organizational events through narrative, assume a managerial identity that reflects current dominant discourse about what a manager should “be.” In doing so they reject other possible discourses that offer alternatives, not only to managerial “being,” but also to what management and organizations might reflect and represent. The paper also, however, recognizes that some managers reject this identity and its implications for organizational activity.

The paper suggests that managerial identity is partly a product of a dominant discursive/ideological formation rather than individual choice. Although managers may reject this interpellation creating an alternative is constrained by the regime of truth that prevails about what management is at any given time. The approach might be considered overly deterministic in its view of managerial identity.

The paper extends the understanding of managerial identity and how it is portrayed through narrative by using a dialogical approach to interpretation.

The aim of this article is to overcome an endogenous view of work, as a category isolated from the other existential spheres, and to identify an alternative approach to understanding how (paid) work and other life domains interweave. Biographical transitions between work and non‐work are analysed, paying specific attention to the processes of gender positioning.

The research is based on the analysis of 60 narrative interviews with men and women working in the Italian public sector (the civil service and the health service). The interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed, and then subjected to narrative analysis, focusing in particular on plots, biographical transitions and positioning processes.

The analysis has brought out the predominant plots, as well as the alternative ones, of the work stories narrated by men and women interviewed, highlighting the specific gender positioning that subtended different attributions between men and women in the inter‐relations between work and the personal and familial sphere.

The results show the opportunity to focus next research on organizations that use managerial models innovative in terms of time organization and performance assessment, giving visibility and legitimacy to alternative narratives on the interweaving among people's different biographical trajectories.

The paper proposes the concept of “biographical transition” as an interpretative category with which to study the different strategies and experiences of work/life balance and an heuristic tool able to give sense to the complex interweaving among different life trajectories in the contemporary society.

Among the various “critical” voices which have contributed to problematizing the discourse on entrepreneurship, that of gender studies is indubitably one of the most significant and fruitful. Applying a gender perspective to the study of entrepreneurship has led to the uncovering of the (male) gender assumptions embodied in the dictates of entrepreneurship and to distinguish between study of women entrepreneurs and study of the relationship between gender and entrepreneurship. One aspect little explored within this diversified array of studies concerns “mixed” situations in which a firm's management is shared between a woman and a man. Such situations are interesting in that: first, they make it possible to problematize the economic rhetoric which promulgates entrepreneurship as an individual and isolated, activity; second, the simultaneous presence of a man and a woman allows observation of whether and how gender stereotypes and practices are at work in the process of positioning Him and Her within the firm. In order to investigate both these aspects, the paper considers 18 verbal histories of women and men entrepreneurs, showing how entrepreneurship can be conceived as a distributed activity, as well as a playground for gender dynamics. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Narrative analysis of 18 “two-voice” interviews (for a total of 36 individual interviews) collected in artisanal activities characterized by the concomitant presence of a Him and a Her within the firm.

First, interweaving between doing gender and doing business; second, entrepreneurship as a distributed activity; third, entrepreneurial environment sets out opportunities and contingent factors which can be used as resources for the positioning of Him and Her in the story and the construction of different narratives. This confirms the multi-dimensionality of entrepreneurial experience and suggests that future research should pay closer attention to the aspects of business activity sharing and reciprocity in the construction and positioning of gender.

Main implication for future research is to pay closer attention to aspects of reciprocity sharing and gender positioning in entrepreneurship.

“Mixed” entrepreneurial experiences (firm's management is shared between a woman and a man) are little explored and it is still uncommon to frame entrepreneurship as a distributed activity.

Drawing on positioning theory, the purpose of this paper is to characterize the activities and positions of students and supervisors at workplaces and on-campus skills training sites across the higher health professional educations of medicine, sports science, and nursing. Furthermore, the study explored the impact of work-based learning (WBL) and skills training on students’ personal professional identity development.

A qualitative case study was conducted across six workplace sites and three on-campus skills training sites with 20 days of observation and 21 in-depth interviews. The data were inductively analyzed resulting in the identification of 12 characteristic narratives. This was followed by abductive analysis using Harré’s concept of positioning as the theoretical framework.

Across the three higher health professional educations, work-based and on-campus skills training sites were characterized by two learning spaces with distinct positions, rights, and duties. The WBL sites gave the students rich opportunities to position themselves, act independently, and behave as professionals seriously striving for mastery. On the on-campus sites, the students behaved less seriously, and were conscious of their rights to try out things, get support, and have fun.

The authors recommend that future studies explore aspects of professional identity formation due to its consequences for curriculum design, including the distribution of simulated spaces and professional spaces in students’ learning environments.

This study adds to the empirical evidence and conceptual frameworks of personal and shared professional identity development in the field of skills and WBL, and it underlines the ongoing value of Harré’s positioning theory in educational research.

This research aims to understand how companies communicate their understanding of water-related challenges and their responses to identify new pathways for addressing this challenge to further advance rising interest in water sustainability strategies of corporations.

Through a content analysis of corporate disclosures, this paper identifies the actions and challenges reported by 35 FTSE 100 companies. These are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to explore variations in the subject of disclosure and the narrative framing.

The findings identify a clear split across the types of water sustainability reporting according to the industrial sector and subject of disclosure, linking to different narratives used according to legitimacy pressures.

This paper finds that energy, materials and consumer staples sectors consistently outperform other sectors on the reporting of water issues and the scope which is covered. This has implications for the design of regulations and incentives to increase water sustainability management activities in large companies, which currently under-report.

This paper highlights the need for policy implementation to further integrate water-related topics into company reporting and identifies situations where the narrative disclosed may distort the underlying situation that is being communicated.

This paper explores the narratives used in company reporting to identify the challenges related to water sustainability and the actions taken in response. This can contribute to developing a pathway towards increased water sustainability (e.g. through new policy design).