The forum “‘Relaaax, I Remember the Recession in the Early 1980s…..’: Organizational Storytelling as a Crisis Management Tool” written by David M. Kopp, Irena Nikolovska, Katie P. Desiderio and Jeffrey T. Guterman declare that organization storytelling can be a vital part to reducing stress and creating positive changes among organizational employees before, during and after a crisis occurs.
Companies today may feel as though an economic crisis is a thing of the past. However, businesses may be just as vulnerable today due to the advancing technology and the political alliances. Therefore, in order to avoid the downfall of a company in the midst of an “Epic Recession”, the authors suggest organizational storytelling as a possible solution. The reason organizational storytelling reduces stress and promote positive changes is because it is linked to sensemaking, the ability to make sense of one’s surroundings and situations. However, the process of organizational storytelling is not as simple as it seems.
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There are an assortment of different types of stories with some proving to be more effective than others. The effectiveness of the stories is measured based on the amount of color and need fulfillment the story provides. As stated by the authors, colors refers to the “structural elements of the story such as lyricism and vivid detail,” while need fulfillment is described as meeting the needs of the organizational members. The types of stories include descriptive story, anecdotal story, script story and epic story, with the descriptive story being the least effective and the epic story being the most effective. The reason epic stories are most effective is because the nature of the stories encourage others to continue overcoming obstacles until they succeed. Regardless of which story the crisis calls for, the authors believe organizational storytelling can be beneficial to most companies.
The main purpose of this forum is to persuade the audience that organizational storytelling is an efficient process that satisfies the needs of organizational members in the face of a crisis and in doing so promotes financial well being in the company. It resembles some of the aspects of an informative forum, but the main purpose is to convince the audience as opposed to inform them. To persuade the audience, the authors use a combination of rhetorical and analytical tools. The main rhetorical device the author facilitates is logos, or the use of logic and reason to persuade an audience.
The forum is structured to where all of the information presented supports the main thesis, including all of the facts, expert testimonies, and examples. Therefore, using logic, the reader is able to come to the conclusion that organizational storytelling is essential to the business world. In order to provide analytical aspects, the authors provide definitions and expert testimonies to the readers. The definitions break down the information, helping the reader understand the material, while the testimonies verify and repeat the information. With the combination of these tools, the authors have succeeded in persuading their audience. Their claims are supported with evidence and presented in a persuasive manner.
The only unsuccessful aspect of this forum was the fact that the authors did not compare organizational storytelling to other methods. Usually writers convince their audience by stating why their product is better than the rest or why there is nothing like this product. By discrediting other methods, the readers would have been further enticed. Regardless of this, the forum accomplishes its desired goal.
