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This paper has been timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the publication of In Search of Excellence. Observing this anniversary, the paper aims to offer a critical review of the works of Tom Peters – a man vaunted as the guru of management. Reviewers have observed that Tom Peters' narratives of business build and depend upon organizational stories to achieve their effects. Recognising that tales of the organization play an important role in sensemaking and sensegiving endeavours, this paper reviews Peters' organizational storytelling in the light of critical academic reflection in this arena.

The paper analyses the eight key works on management produced by Tom Peters between 1982 and 2003 from a storytelling perspective. Building upon Yiannis Gabriel's account of the essence of the poetic tale, the paper compiles a catalogue of Tom Peters' storywork.

On the strength of the cataloguing exercise, the paper charts a decline in this guru's storytelling; the predominance of certain story types; Peters' transmutation from narrator for, to hero of, the business world.

While acknowledging the need for further research and analysis, the paper suggests that the quantitative and qualitative changes evident in Peters' storywork catalogue suggest that this guru's connection to the world of business has become increasingly remote and unproductive. Accordingly, this review questions Peters' status as an organizational storyteller/organizational “sensegiver”, and so, questions his future prospects as a guru.

The situating of pimatisiwin as a framework for spatial justice and self-determination aids educators in strengthening their understandings of Indigenous knowledges to support an authentic inclusion of Indigenous students with disabilities. Through the sharing of Canada’s colonial history, and by critically examining the principles of care within special education, the author exposes its relationship with ableism, normalcy, eugenics, and white privilege to show how Indigenous peoples continue to be marginalized in the twenty-first century. This justice work asks educators to shift their perspectives of inclusion and wellness through the insertion of an Indigenous lens, one to help them see and hear the faces and voices of disabled Aboriginal children and their kinships. The chapter discusses the social model of disability, the psychology of Gentle Teaching, Indigenous ethics, and principles of natural laws through the voices of Nehiyawak and other knowledge keepers, in order to suggest an agenda for educators to come to an understanding of an emancipatory and gentle education. Spatial justice and Indigenous epistemologies merge as synergistic, inclusive, and holistic entities, to support Aboriginal children and youth as both they and those who teach learn to celebrate disabled ontologies. The chapter concludes by presenting how Gentle Teaching and Indigenous ways of knowing should be honored in this quest of creating an equitable, caring, and inclusive society for all disabled Indigenous children and youth.

The Guest Editors’ intent with this special issue is to tell tales of the field and beyond, but all with the serious end of rendering visible the largely invisible. This paper aims to introduce the articles forming the special issue, as well as reviewing extant work that foregrounds the hidden stories and uncertainties of doing qualitative research.

The authors advance their arguments through a literature review approach, reflecting on the “state of the field” with regard to doing research and offering new directions on reflexivity as an ethical consideration for conducting qualitative research.

Far from consigning the mess entailed in doing qualitative research to the margins, there is much to be learned from, and considerable value in, a more thoughtful engagement with the dilemmas we face in the field and beyond, one that shows the worth of what we are highlighting to both enrich research practice itself and contribute to improving the quality of what we produce.

This paper turns the spotlight onto the messiness and storywork aspects of conducting research, which are all too often hidden from view, to promote the kinds of dialogues necessary for scholars to share their fieldwork stories as research, rather than means to a publication end.

Traditional fire practices are explored so as to understand transformative relationships to Country and as an analogy for developments in Indigenous Health. Stories of fire encompass the resistance of Indigenous Australians to colonial dispossession. Stories of fire engage Indigenous communities with law and culture and from this with health. Transformative knowledges can be built upon re-kindling Indigenous land and law practices through fire practices. Building relationships with fire and burning practices corresponds with the developing sustainable health and cultural practices across Indigenous communities.

Indigenous and racialized people have suffered multifaceted dispossession as a result of ongoing and historical violence by the Canadian state. Most greatly affected are Indigenous gender-queer and nonbinary people, who have been erased by law and policy and are targets of violence; Indigenous women, who are targeted by gender discrimination and violence; and Indigenous children, who continue to be removed from their communities. Nonwhite or racialized migrants to Canada are victims of the same colonial project, which relies on the slavery of Black and Brown bodies and Orientalist constructions that portray the West as “superior” in relation to the “barbaric” East. This dispossession, oppression, and violence are met by a constellation of local and global approaches to resist, heal, and create Fearless futures for Indigenous and racialized people.

Through collaborative storytelling, this chapter centers a radical project focused on resistance to gender violence, reconnection to land and body, Indigenous and settler solidarity, storytelling and witnessing, and healing through art. These efforts, including multiple community workshops and mural projects with Indigenous and racialized women, as well as queer and two-spirit people and youth, have recentered Indigenous healing and medicine, promoted intergenerational teachings, fostered intercommunity relationship building and solidarities through stories and witnessing, reconnected disconnected Indigenous peoples (both local and settler) to their bodies, lands, and communities, and unsettled colonial mentalities on gender and Indigeneity publicly and privately. This project was a collaboration between The Fearless Collective, based in South Asia, the Innovative Young Indigenous Leaders Symposium, based in British Columbia, Canada, and research from the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, British Columbia.

This chapter provides a critical and comprehensive review of the internationalisation literature. It starts with a brief discussion of the main factors and features that need to be considered when internationalising the educational administration and leadership field. This is followed by a critique of the internationalisation of education and the many challenges that hinder the achievement of proper internationalisation. The third section provides an overview of the internationalisation models and practices in different disciplines such as psychology, sociology and political science, which is followed by a discussion on the internationalisation of education organisations in different countries with some examples from Arab and non-Western countries. The final section presents a critical review of literature on internationalising the curriculum and how culture competency and knowledge acquisition are key factors in achieving effective internationalisation. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book collection and the main ideas and concepts discussed in each chapter.

While diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace means making space for all employees, it has unique implications for Indigenous employees who live and work in countries built on colonialism. Indigenous peoples represent diverse groups with unique and rich cultures that in general share values that are more holistic, spiritual, traditional, egalitarian, and other-oriented than non-Indigenous populations. Such distinct worldviews help explain why non-Indigenous organizations struggle to understand and accommodate Indigenous employees’ priorities and goal-oriented behavior. Creating equity, inclusivity, and belonging in the workplace for Indigenous employees requires more than implementing existing organizational practices with a new cultural awareness, it requires rethinking, reframing, and recreating organizational to facilitate a culture of trust. Re-examining organizational norms and assumptions with the ideas of relationship and responsibility that allow collaborative approaches to collective well-being and inclusivity is required. Creating inclusive workspaces requires that attention must be paid to both organizational (group-level) factors, such as organizational cultures of trust, and interpersonal (individual-level) factors, such as interpersonal trust. However, to build foundations of high-functioning and supportive organizational cultures and interpersonal trust that are sustainable, time and resources are necessary. Without this, the ability to reach the crucial result of engaging Indigenous employees and creating safe workplaces serves only to be performative and not meaningful in terms of action, longevity, and the overall well-being of Indigenous people in the workplace.