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This article analyzes the decline of the Amsterdam squatters’ movement, examining not why the movement declined, but how. I argue decline is a critical moment for activists, one full of creative action. Decline is a defining moment through which the present, past, and future are interpreted. Narratives are key to understanding this process. As the movement emergence narrative declined, competing narratives of decline emerged. The widening chasm between the initial story and the movement's status compelled activists to choose between saving the movement or the narrative. I identify four critical moments during the movement's response to decline: they initially deny decline; after admitting decline, they debate tactics, followed by debating identities; and finally they demand decline as the only solution for the movement's problem. The movement moves through a process of increasing exclusion, working to resolve internal contradictions defined by the original narrative and identity.

Although childless women comprise around 17% of women aged 65 and over in the US (Census Bureau, US, 2016) and up to 20% in other places in the world (Dykstra, 2009), the intersection of childlessness, female gender and old age has not been as widely explored as is necessary; older women have historically been and continue to be overlooked in feminist research compared to other groups of women (Browne, 1998; Ray, 1996; Twigg, 2004). Therefore, how childlessness affects identity and identity, childlessness in later life is not well understood. Our analysis considered: How do never-married, childless women identify themselves in terms of age? What are the key features of such an age identity? And, do these identities align with progress narratives or narratives of decline? For this chapter, interviews with 53 older women (22 African American, 31 White) aged 60 and over, who described themselves as never married and without biological children, were analysed. Questions were semi-structured and open-ended and covered background health information, a life story interview, questions about social networks, various forms of generativity and the sample’s views about the future. Overall, these women negotiated their age identity not necessarily in relation to others (e.g. child, spouse) but in relation to themselves as social actors with an orientation towards the future – what will tomorrow bring? These forward-thinking narratives point to a new and important way to consider progress narratives and to rethink trajectories of the experience of aging.

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.

Interest in older employees increases in times of population ageing. Previous research exploring the situation has underlined older employees' struggle with workplace changes. However, it has not explored their master narrative – the socially shared narrative about older employees that steers behaviour. This study explores this narrative and its differences across changing workplaces. It draws on Lyotard's suggestion that master narratives disintegrate in post-modern societies.

This study conducts focus groups among older Finnish employees of an airline, postal service and social care. These groups experienced different kinds of workplace changes, namely mass layoffs, digitalisation and restructuring. The focus groups highlight the individuals' shared narratives, thereby pinpointing the master narrative.

The master narrative describes how simultaneous changes at the workplace and in their health lead older employees to look for ways to exit their jobs. This narrative is largely stable across workplaces, showing no disintegration but some variation.

This is the first study on the master narrative of older employees and its disintegration. To the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first study to use focus groups to explore a master narrative.

The article argues that local social networks are crucial to addressing the perceived shortfall in ‘respect’ and civility. Meanings of ‘respect’ are explored and older people's narratives of the decline of neighbourliness are used to explore the sense that for many people ‘community’ has been lost. It is argued that policy and practice have a role to play in the reinvigoration of local social networks.

A royal charter of incorporation imposing public benefit/social responsibilities established the privately owned British South Africa Company (BSAC), in return for power to exploit a huge territory using low-cost local labour. This study explores the dual principal–agent problem of how the BSAC used annual report narratives to report on its conflicting economic responsibilities to investors versus its public benefit charter responsibilities to the British Crown.

Having digitised the dataset, the research analyses narratives from 29 BSAC annual reports spanning a continuous 35-year royal charter period, using computer-aided keyword content analysis to identify economic-orientated versus public benefit-orientated annual report narratives. The research analyses how the annual report narratives shifted according to four key contextual periods by reference to the changing influence of private investors versus the British Crown.

There are two key findings. First, economic primacy. At no point do public benefit disclosures outweigh economic disclosures. Second, the BSAC's meso-corporate context and macro-social/political context can explain patterns in public benefit disclosures. The motivation for producing public benefit information is not altruism. Rather, commercial interests motivate disclosure. The BSAC used its annual reports to sustain what proved ultimately unsustainable – royal charter-style colonialism.

This accounting history study contributes to an understanding of corporate narrative reporting using one of the earliest known cases of such analysis and shows how accounting plays a central role in facilitating a company in sustaining its interests. This 100-year lookback may be a portend of the future for modern-day annual report corporate social responsibility narratives in, say, mining and oil and gas company corporate reports, especially if these natural resources run out.

Purpose – The chapter seeks to broaden the literature on narrative identity by focusing on the processes by which collective, or group, identity narratives develop over time.

Methodology/approach – The chapter combines a “netnography” approach (i.e., ethnography using the Internet) with traditional ethnographic procedures in order to develop an in-depth case study of the collective identity narratives of a selected community that is undergoing rapid economic change.

Findings – Over the course of approximately one century, there have been six distinguishable identity narratives in the selected community. We show that three of these, covering most of the period under investigation, have historical value, while three others are currently competing to become a new narrative identity adapted to the community's altered situation.

Research limitations/implications – The online survey used in the research elicited responses from a broad range of persons nationwide, including both current and former residents. The total number of responses, however, was relatively limited, and we cannot be certain to what degree they represent the views of all current members of the community.

Practical implications – The findings of the chapter may prove useful to local citizens, as well as elected officials and business leaders, as they seek to develop strategic plans for the community's future.

Social implications – The research reveals significant differences in attitudes among older and younger residents, as well as between those who had some association with the community's steel mill and those who did not.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter seeks to make theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions. On the conceptual level, the discussion raises the seldom explored issue of collective narratives. Methodologically, the analysis adds to the literature on “netnography,” which has thus far been largely dominated by scholars in management. Empirically, the chapter identifies specific stories emerging in a deindustrializing community.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for an archaeological expedition of sorts, to search for and to uncover a host of stories which might assist us in piecing together a framework worth dedicating our future lives to understanding ageing.

This is a theoretical paper on ageing.

An individual's experience of ageing is integrally bound to questions of culture – particularly the systems of meaning within culture – and context. Just as there is not “one true story of aging”, so the paper suggests that we must have multiple narratives to assist us in building our own models of successful ageing.

Narratives of successful ageing, like all narratives, are never told in a vacuum. Rather, there must be those who are able to hear them, often stretching themselves beyond their own experiences, even beyond their own cultural frameworks. This has strong implications for researchers of successful ageing: together, we must try to meet the challenge of listening to diversity.

This chapter examines patterns of neighbouring in the small Essex town of ‘Eastside’, located in London’s eastern suburban periphery. Drawing on qualitative interviews, two groups of resident interviewees are discussed: established, long-term, white British residents who have lived in Eastside for many years, and ethnically diverse newcomers who have recently moved to the area. This chapter focuses on patterns of neighbouring – both positive in the form of ‘neighbourliness’ and negative in terms of ‘unneighbourliness’ – and considers whether neighbouring provided the basis for residents to develop a sense of community. Basic neighbouring activities, such as saying ‘hello’ and the mutual provision of support, were commonplace, although proactive intervention and socialising with neighbours were more limited. Only a minority of both long-term and incoming interviewees identified a sense of community based upon neighbouring. The dominant aspect of the former’s sense of community was a ‘narrative of decline’ in which they lamented the loss of the more intense neighbourliness that they recalled from the past. Unneighbourliness was also evident, for example, in relation to noise, and various reasons for this are analysed including deficiencies within the physical environment, tenure prejudice, and established/newcomer resident tensions.