Narrativeas a research method

Murray HunterUniversity Malaysia Perlis

Logical Reasoned

Precise

Time Orientated

Language

Intuitive

Holistic Spatial Conceptual

Mathematical

Imagination

Empathy

Emotional

Music

This gives us two views of the world

We view the world through field dependence or independence (Witkin 1954, 1973, 1977)

Left Hand Side

Sequential processing, A to b to C Looks at facts and detailed information Splits the world into concrete and

identifiable categories Logical cause and effect reasoning Linear thinking from task to task Follows on pre-existing fixed rules Maths and science Statistically inclined Systematic appraisal Thinks in words and language Utilizes the concept of time, past and

present Objective reality based Logically strategizes Splits things apart Knows Acknowledges Reality based Realistic Safety, risk adverse

Right Hand Side

Holistic processing, big picture orientated

Visual and spatial Looks at the whole rather than pieces Analogic: sees similarities and

resemblances Feelings and emotional thought Philosophy and religion Thinks in images Transformative Intuitive Looks for relationships, patterns, makes

associations Looks for unbounded connections Lumps things together: connector Imagination Present and future orientated Looks at possibilities Uses symbols and images Believes Appreciates Fantasy based Impetuous Adventurous, risk taker

However only the left can speak out

Yellow Blue Orange Black Red Green Purple Yellow Red Orange Green Black Blue Red Purple Green Blue Orange

Please say the colours

An example of hemisphere conflict

The ability to manipulate The ability to imagine

The Prefrontal Cortex

Emotions influence our decisions before reasoning, a leftover from our primal existence.

The Fourth Factor

Is it rationality or emotion you that makes you decide to buy a car like

this?

Groups have primal narratives

Why do we buy fine fragrances?

A cat also has consciousness

Cats can solve problems and learn

Communicate

Cats can act socially

Have mental maps

Many apes have empathy

The dawn of man

Narrative is the heart of consciousness

Consciousness is partly a social phenomena

Narrative expresses ……………..

Hopes Feelings

Problem solvingMeans of transferring ideas

Imagination

Meaning

Empathy

Sharing values

Sharing beliefs

Self identity

Ethical & spiritual codes

Fears

Social hierarchies

Our relational position to society

Our projections

Our introspections

The Four Part Brain

1. Rational

2. Holistic

3. Empathic/Imaginative

4. Emotional

We live in a quantitative World

Organization is quantitative

Scientific Management

Newtonian Physics

So when research is considered

Causation, correlation or even reverse causation?

White, Roderick E. , Thornhill, Stewart and Hampson, Elizabeth, Entrepreneurs and Evolutionary Biology: The Relationship between Testosterone and New Venture Creation (2003). Babson College, Babson Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BKERC), 2002-2006

High-testosterone entrepreneurs lead bigger--but less profitable--firms

ENTREPRENEURS AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TESTOSTERONE AND NEW VENTURE What drives women out of

entrepreneurship? The joint role of testosterone and culture

The fallacy of factors leading to success

Factors contributing to the growth of small manufacturing firms: data from Australia

The key success factors, distinctive capabilities, and strategic thrusts of top SMEs in Singapore

Raw materials

Transport

Production Transport

Warehouse

Supermarket

Community

Farm

Transport

Education

Research & Development

Management

Fossil Fuels Pollution

Power generation

Export/Import

Air Transport

Waste

Competition & Tension

Conflict

Government

Diversity

Economic Growth

Health Development Poverty &

Unhappiness

Consumption

Uncertainty

New Paradigms

Regulation

A simplified environment

More Complex Problems

Yield and Chemical

Constituents of the

Essential Oil

Location

Topography

Slope & drainage

Climate

Sunshine hours

Seasons

Rainfall

Humidity

Temperature

UV radiation

Genetic Material

Collection

Purchase

Plant physiology

Propagation characteristics

Soil

Nutrients

pH

Drainage & water holding qualities

Humus

Compactness

Mineral residuals

Agronomic Practices

Soil type

Irrigation

Pest & weed control

Plant densities

Harvest & Extraction Practices

Time & method of harvest

Pre-harvest handling & preparation

Method of extraction Extraction time

Losing sight of variables

Does quantitative research give meaning?

Reductionist Quantitative Research

But what is it really?

You might learn a lot about a little bit

Holistic Qualitative Research

What is Meaning?

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Situational and contextual meaning does not make for good quantitative research

Can quantitative research clear up ambiguity?

Even simple environments are complex and have multiple perspectives

“We would be very happy if our

children undertook higher education”

Attempt to impress listener

Deny an unhappy family life

Cultural expectations

Keeping up with the “Jones”

Could be the truth

Narrative device of optimism

Keeping Face

Showing off

Peoples statements can have multiple meanings

Narrative as hope

Narrative as we want others to see us

Narrative as we see our self

Narrative as we want to suppress

Reality

Narrative as Truth

What is the truth anyway?

All such notions as causation, succession and primary agent

relationships are all figments of the imagination which can have multiple

explanations. Narrative lets us see the explanation from the actor’s

point of view.

A descriptive theory is a narrative

A descriptive theory is “the way things are” which in most disciplines we rarely get right.

Normative theories are common narratives

A normative theory is a predictive, instrumental, or positivist theory

All great normative theories? Which one works?

Is there such thing as a positivist theory that actually works?

The truth keeps changing as we see new

things

Narrative can accommodate ambiguity much better than qualitative research

Isn’t management ambiguous?

Stakeholder wants

The environment

Labour relationsPolitics

Power

Personalities

Motivations

Paradoxes, cost-quality, sales-profit, hierarchy-

knowledge etc

Chaotic environment

Management prerogative

NegotiationsCompetitors

Narrative is empirical research just as quantitative research is

Ricoeur argues that there is an integral connection between narrative and action.

Narratives lead individuals to intervene in the course of things. The action derives from

intention or motivation, based on the particular narratives of an individual, irrespective of whether these are self

generated, after appropriation from a culture.

Drummond argues ‘that narrative is the fundamental scheme for linking individual human action and events into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite’.

Drummond argues organisation culture, leadership, conflict and change are narratives. One way of framing this is that organisation culture is composed of many narratives with enough coherence between them to give a sense of the whole’.36 Change occurs when new narratives replace old narratives. If the change is superficial, then the narratives could be described as morphostatic; (changing the chairs on the Titanic would not stop the ship sinking); or morphogenic; where things will never be the same again’.37 Hence, it can be argued that the linking of strategy and complexity through narrative theory collectively extends each theory and provides a theoretical underpinning to understand better these concepts and the linkages between them.

A theoretical link must now be made between narrative and strategy and again the work of Ricoeur is instructive, beginning with narrative and the individual. This will lead us to make the connection between narrative and organisational strategy which in turn leads to the concept of identification since an organisation’s strategy requires individuals (members of the organisation) it identify with it, or support it, at least in some minimal ways.

Narrative as a story

• The way that stories are told, how meaning is constructed to achieve the understanding of the audience.

• Groups events into cause and effect – action and inaction.• Organises time and space in very compressed form.• The voice of the narrative can vary; whose story is being

told and from whose perspective?• Narrative plot refers to everything audibly or visibly

present, i.e. selective.• Narrative story refers to all the events, explicitly

presented or referred.

• As children we listen to fairytales and myths/legends. As we grow older, we read short stories, novels, history and biographies.

• Religion is often presented through a collection of “stories/moral tales” e.g. the Bible, the Ramayana, etc.

• Scientific breakthrough is often presented as stories of an experimenter/scientist’s trials.

• Cultural phenomena such as plays, films, dance and paintings tell stories.

• News events are told as stories.• Dreams are retold as stories.

We use narratives or stories to make sense of our lives and the world around us. There different ways in which we use the narrative form:

The world is seen from our own perspective – our narrative

Memory is in “I” & “Me” Mode

Knowledge Belief Truth

Imagination

Memory

How many Chalices are in Leonardo da

Vinci’s painting of the Last

Supper?

We see what we want to see

Experience introduces feeling & emotion to learning

Meaning• Dear Honorable Dato'/Prof./Assoc.Prof./Dr./Mr/Mrs/Miss,

Kindly be informed that there will be a talk on "Science of Knowledge", scheduled as follows :

Date : 9th September 2011 (Friday)Time : 3.00 pm ~ 4.30 pm Venue : PPIPT Meeting Room, Block A Attendance : Compulsory to all academic staffsSpeaker : Honorable Prof. Dato' Wira Dr. Mohd Salleh Bin Hj Din

Your commitment and attendance is deeply appreciated.

Thanking in advance.

Confidence?

The Things we thinkThe things we do

The intentions we haveThe things we buy

Are all governed by our own stories

Meaning

We give symbols common meaning to form society’s narrative

A Product is a Narrative

Heaven Strategy (Dan Hill 2010)

Emotional Response

Response Rate

Negative Positive

Low

High

More negative/high

response

More positive/lower

response

More negative/lower

response

More positive/highe

r response

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Stories we construct

Stories we construct shape our assumptions, beliefs and values

How do you know?

Archetypes

• The hero (seeking something)• The Villain (opposing the hero)

• The donor/benefactor/provider (a helper)• The dispatcher (sends the hero on his/her way)

• The false hero (falsely assuming the role of the hero)• The helper (assisting the hero)

• The princess (seeking protection of the hero)

Our different selves can be considered archetypes

Discovering Meaning

How many stories are there here?

Narrative gives meaning – without narrative there is no meaning

Most of the time we project our meanings onto

others

Stereotyping

Who is the successful person here?

Who is the most

successful here?

Value is socially constructed

Meaning is relative

Gender is a relative concept

Building Frameworks or our own Meta-

Theories

Narrative integrates subjectivity and objectivity through

storytelling to produce scientific explanations (i.e., meaning) of

the world

Narrative deals with the development of stories over time (a longitudinal study)

Narrative creates our identity

Narrative is a form of ‘meaning making’. It is a complex form which expresses itself by drawing together descriptions of states of affairs contained in individual sentences into particular types of discourse. This drawing together creates a higher order of meaning that discloses relationships among states of affairs.

Narrative recognizes the meaningfulness of individual experiences by noting how they function as parts of a whole. Its particular subject matter is human actions and events that affect human beings, which it configures into wholes according to the roles these actions and events play in bringing about a conclusion. Because narrative is particularly sensitive to the temporal dimension of human existence, it pays special attention to the sequence of actions and events occur.

Poklinghorne, D. E. (1988) Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, Albany, NY State University of New York Press.

Narratives come into existence……Events happen and we observe and participate in them and we make conscious (and unconscious) note of what is happening. Narrative

puts these events into our own context of understanding and feeling.

Narrative is about how we make sense of the world

Narrative is unique to a situation, bit similar situations may have similar narratives by different

people.

Narrative

A Meta-Theory Trap & Filter

Culture (Values, Beliefs & Assumptions)

Emotions

Transactional Analysis and/or Field Theory

Narrative Theory

Narrative Theory

Paul Ricoeur

Emplotment is integral to narrative. Narrative should consider a plot, with goals, causes, and

chance being brought together within the temporal unity of a whole and complete action.

However the plot may avoid a chronological listing of events and transforms isolated vents

into a schematic whole by highlighting and recognizing the contribution that each event

makes to the development and outcome of the story.

Human experiences are held in the mind as pre-concepts (narratives in the making which Ricoeur calls mimesis 1, or pre-configuration.

The articulation of an experience or the narration of an experience (its emplotment)

is called mimesis 2, or configuration. Sometimes experiences are re-authored to make sense of the situation, which Ricoeur

calls mimesis 3.

Images and Connections

Concepts

Ideas

Opportunity

Vision Platform - Perception

Time & Space Potential

Concept Generator – Making Connections

Sources of Opportunity Learning:

Conceptual World

Identifying concepts

Evaluation after experience

Complete re-evaluation (seek further information)

Real World

Experimentation & Testing

Structure common to all opportunities Vision – Outcomes

Time & Space Resources Networks

Skills, Competencies & Capabilities Competitive Environment Strategy – scope & depth

“A Narrative”

Evaluated and Elaborated Upon

Mimesis 1

Mimesis 2

Mimesis 3

Articulated Narratives: Those that we are part, work, school, club, religion, nation, etc.

Embedded Narratives: Specific narratives within a person’s consciousness from preconfigured experiences,

etc.

Dominant Logic (Prahalad)

The way people deal with events and situations in life. Dominant logic consists of a mental

map which orientates a person. It can either inhibit or enhance learning, growth and

fulfillment.

I would like to reframe this as the dominant narrative

Dominant Logic

• Our behaviour, focus and the way people act • A set of ideas about ourselves and the world • Personal rules and experiences • A reflection of our success, failure, and

indifference• Something that is invisible, internal • An organisation's genetic code • An organisation's operating system

Innovate Avoid mistakes

Think long termLive for today

Spend for the futureSave money

Paradoxes

Work by oneself Work as a group

Follow rules and normsBe flexible

Collaborate Compete

Make your own decisions Make joint decisions

Conflict Harmony

Metaphor

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Typologies

Listening Exercise• The simple act of listening shows how we sometimes wander through life with a low

level of awareness. How many times when someone is speaking to you, are you preoccupied with other things? How often do we daydream when others are speaking? How often do you believe that what you think is right and what the other has to say is not worth listening to? How often are you just waiting for an opportunity to espouse what you think? How often are you just thinking of rebuttals, arguments against what a person is saying rather than actually listening to the content of what they are actually saying? How often are you making judgments about the person speaking or what they are saying? How often are you looking for an opportunity to disagree, agree, or run away? How often are you evaluating and comparing what a person is saying against what you believe? How often do you fail to seek clarification about something you don’t understand? Do you try and control the interaction by trying to dominate the conversation? Our listening habits usually show that our level of personal awareness is low and we are influenced by so much of our own emotion just in the act of listening to someone. This is at the cost of seeing new perspectives and exercising our ability to empathize with others. One member of the group should tell the rest of the group about what they did over the weekend un-interrupted. The rest of the group should take notes about

what they were thinking about while they were listening to the story.

• The ability to listen effectively is a powerful tool in developing awareness, empathy, humility, and consequently understand new perspectives. Listening is much more than hearing, it involves being attentive to what others say, observing emotion, behaviour and body language, facial expressions, and fighting off our own internal distractions that lessen of ability to listen. Listening requires much more discipline, attention, and concentration than we expect. Think about it, how much self discipline do we need to really effectively listen to someone? Once we have achieved the discipline, attention, and concentration really needed to listen, we realize how powerful a tool listening is in understanding what a person has to say, and from where emotionally a person is saying it. Listening skills can be developed and refined through active and reflective listening techniques, where the listener repeats, paraphrases and reflects upon what the speaker is saying as a means of clarifying the message that the speaker is intending to convey to us [92].

Select the correct tools for a mission

Edgar Schein’s Approach to Organizational Culture

Culture is a story

Leadership

Theories in action verses Espoused

Norms and group behaviour Organisational

learning (single or double looped

Productivity & effectiveness

Stories, myths, heroes, artifacts, informal behaviours

Assumptions

Look for the values

The Emotional Vista

True Self (Universal awareness)

Spiritual Awareness

Ego Awareness

Social Awareness

Material Awareness

Physical Awareness

Spiritual Self

Ego Self

Social Self

Material Self

Primal Self

Physical Sensations

Perception

Society

We have multiple narratives in ourselves

All narrative comes from our emotional orientation

Present Orientation

Future Orientation

Past Orientation

Memory Imagination

Belief System

Patterning

Optimal learning

Sense of high self efficacy

Sense of low self efficacy

Bad memories Good memories

Negative emotions Positive emotions

Action adverse Reckless overconfidence Heuristics Imagination

Optimal drive

Value sets

Primal Emotions

Pleasant Unpleasant

Unconscious

Conscious

Core Emotions

Affected Emotions

Object/Event

Perception/ Recognition

Varied Mix of

Emotions

Perceived Reality

Leftover from Evolution

Fear, Anger Sadness, Loss, Hate, Joy, Pain, Pleasure, Curiosity, Sexual Desire, etc.

Deep Subconscious: Self-esteem, self-efficacy, Feeling of hopelessness, Low Frustration tolerance,

Awfulness, etc.

Loyalty, Sympathy, Pride, Humility,

Confident, Achievement, Embarrassment,

Indignation, Bewilderment, Pity, Elation, Satisfaction,

Boredom, Shame, Disgust, Frustration,

Surprise, etc.

Complex Emotions

Primal Emotions Deep Inner Self

Core Emotions Anxious, Happiness, Guilt, Greed, Envy, Depression, Hope,

Interest, etc.

Socially Related Emotions

(Socially Constructed)

The Hierarchy of Emotions

Our personality is a mix of emotions just like Milton the Monster

What Emotions are they feeling?

Nervous Energetic Determined

Courage

Passionate

Excited

intimidated

Anxious

Overwhelmed Competitive Challenging

Green are positive, Red are negative and yellow emotions can go either way

Courage

Passionate

intimidated

Determined

Energetic

Overwhelmed

Anxious

Challenging

The different sets of emotions will heavily

influence performance.

Awkward

Passionate

Tense

Confident

Shy

Scared

Excited

Confused

“Big-headed”

Overwhelmed

Different weight and balance of emotions may produce different behaviour & performance

The cocktail of emotionsWe in fact usually feel a number of

different emotionsAll mixed together

With different Strengths and Influences on

behaviour

Individual

Sea of Emotion Overwhelmed

in emotion

In control of emotionThe anxiety line

Level of Awareness

Exercise

Relax, breath in and out, remove all your thoughts,

relax your muscles

Where am “I”?

Is this what you found?

Our true self is like a computer without any operating system or software

Here is our personal operating system

Empathy ExerciseSome people don’t realize we are doing destructive things that hurt others

[67]. Sometimes this hurt can lead to grave and serious illness. If we switch our self from the usual “I am” to a different viewpoint, i.e., the feeling of being superior, equal, or inferior to another, from one of these viewpoints we can generate new sets of emotions. For example, if we take a superior view point to others we may generate intensive highhandedness. If we view others as equals we may generate feelings of jealousy and competitiveness, and if we view others from an inferior position, we may generate feelings of jealousy and envy. This helps us see the perspectives of our false sense of ourselves and the source of our behaviours. If we can substitute humility for our emotions (humility does not mean subservience or inferiority), we can see our relationships without the emotional intensities that existed before. We can see our inter-connectiveness, how our actions hurt people, and how we stray from our innate morality.

In a group one person share a story where emotions have dominated their judgments and with the group come up with alternative sets of thoughts that may

lead to new sets of emotions.

Traps & Filters

Interpersonal Communication

A brief look at Transactional Analysis

Murray Hunter (with the narratives

supplied by my organization behaviour students at

University Malaysia Perlis

Parent

Adult

Child

Parent Ego State Behaviours, thoughts

and feelings copied from parents and parent figures.

Adult Ego State Behaviours, thoughts

and feelings are direct responses to here and now.

Child Ego State Behaviours, thoughts

and feelings are replayed from childhood.

Parent Parent

Adult Adult

Child Child

Transactional Analysis relationship Dynamics

You Me

Parent

Adult

Child

Controlling Parent Nurturing Parent

Controlling Adult Nurturing Adult

Creative ChildImmature Child

Okay my dear son, let mummy tell you the story.

(Nurturing mother)

Mummy, what is this? Can you tell me the story about this.

(creative child)

Hey , who is that guy you were with!!!?

(controlling mother )

Stop, I don’t want to go to school today

(immature child )

I don’t have money anymore!!!!!!!!

(controlling adult)

Congratulations on your graduation.

Good luck.(nurturing adult)

Honey, Can you cook for me today.perhaps, some tom yum honey.

(nurturing adult)

Altenative: I love U Sayang (darling) (Creative child)

A person may play more than one role at the same time

@#$&%%$!!!!!!! Ya(immature child )

This type of stance brings

Rigidity inthought

Lalalalallalaalala(Creative child)

These are theConditions oneShould develop

to maximize creativity

Group Exercise

Watch the following conversation between two students (or film clip) and determine

the transactional dynamics of the conversation (i.e., parent-parent, Adult-

Adult, Child-Child, Parent-Adult, or Parent-child).

Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Theory

The field is a sphere or plain of social life where each person or agent is operating within it according to a practical logic with the objective of achieving some end. The field can be a society, a village, a market, an industry, an organization or any other social structure.

A person’s power to influence or dominate the field depends upon the amount and type of capital they possess in relation to other agents. To Bourdieu the concept of capital was much wider than financial resources. Four types of capital exist;

Economic capital – access to money, buildings, plant and equipment, etc,Cultural capital – knowledge which equips the social agent with empathy toward for, or appreciation for, or competence working within the cultural rules and norms within the field,Social capital – consisting of resources obtainable through connections and group networks, andSymbolic capital – which include socially derived symbols like university degrees, or acceptance by social institutions within the field (Drummond 1998, P. 104).

The field as a social sphere has its own set of practical logic, producing a habitus embodied with the logic making it uniquely suited to operate within it. Due to social background and social grounding through families and education, a habitus will be more predisposed to operate in certain fields rather than others or the field will draw the person with the appropriate habitus to play the game in that field. This is an explanation of why it is difficult for people to move into businesses outside fields their habitus is not conditioned to. The modus operandi of the field is foreign and the agent does not have the necessary practical logic within their habitus, or the necessary capital to gain any influence within the field.

Given the relationship between the habitus and the field, it can be seen that the social structure (field) produces the mental structure (habitus), that produce social structure (field), that produce mental structure (habitus), that produce social structure (field). Everybody is unaware of this process as they are within it. Therefore the individual’s rationality is a social bounded phenomenon where our practical logic, disposition towards to perceptions, appreciation, view of the world, and action content is created through experience within a social structure.

The habitus can generate new principals of strategy and practice that flow from experiences that produce it, taking into account of specific social content within the field the individual is playing in (Boudieu 1991, P.14).

When the habitus is in line with the field and vice versa, a coherent logic of practice develops. This logic is called doxa. Doxa is the basic belief and value system of the habitus where it accepts its social position and place in the world. Doxa operates at the pre-conscious level.

Alan Fiske

The Four Elementary Types of Relationships

The explicit & Implicit

Body Language

On being emergent or reflective?

Emergent In a stance of anticipation A narrative of action and forming meaning

ReflectiveIn a stance of learning

A narrative of significance of the meaning involved

Compresses time

Emergent there maybe emphasis on anxiety and

the significance of making an important commitment.

In a reflective mode there maybe an emphasis on the joy of the occasion.

Different modes will produce different sets of

meanings.

In reflective narrative many people try to justify

their past decisions. In emergent analysis more of

the uncertainty of the situations are apparent.

The reflective version may be about the joy of

the occassion

The emergent version may be full of anxiety and uncertainty about

commitment

A Person’s View if the world

Through Narrative we can see:

Through their stories

The types of relationships

IntentionsMotivations

Construction of ethics

Self View

What they see & how they see

things

Values

Beliefs

Assumptions

Biases

Thinking Processes

Self efficacy & esteem

How decisions are

madeLevel of

awareness

Emotions

Influences

Past or future

orientation

Sequences

What they espouse/what they do

What they respect

Where can we use Narrative?

• In the classroom – aid to learning/understanding• Research – developing descriptive theory• Marketing – Branding & advertising• Entrepreneurship research (The Republic of Tea)• Organizational Analysis• Political analysis• Social analysis• Self & Identity • Cognition & Creativity Research

Field Research

Documentation as a prime source (Historical or Contemporary)

Analyzing the Narrative

Live

NARRATIVE

EMOTION

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

ARTIFACT

VALUE

ASSUMPTION

The Model of Organizational Culture by Edgar Schein

The Transactional Theory by Eric Berne

Self Awareness Mode Murray Hunter

The Theory of Action by Ricouer

A Narrative Meta-Theory

Map Out the Big Picture of the Research Phenomena

Making Sense of Narrative is Very Similar to Undertaking English Comprehension Exercises (with extra “meaning tools”)

Emotional orientation

Paranoid

Obsessive-Compulsive

Attention-Seeking

(Dramatic)

Depressive

Schizoid

Narcissistic

Balanced Organization

Leaderless & apathetic Excessive caution & conservatism

Rigidity Lack of vision & strategy Weak competitiveness

Suspicious No distribution of information

Centralized decision making Lack of definite strategy

Rigid Narrow Vision

Excessive risk taking

Inconsistent Political decisions Poor leadership Climate of suspicion

Inconsistent strategy

Centralized decisions Unplanned expansion

Centralized decisions

Unplanned strategy

Shallowness

Recklessness

Traditional

Potential Behaviour

Transactional Analysis(A framework to communicate)

Person “A” “I” & “Me” View of the world

Person “B” “I” & “Me” View of the world

Similarity or conflict

Emotions

Dominant Narrative

Values

Beliefs

Assumptions

Words, phrases, metaphors, analogies

The Dialogue

Film & Drama

Analysis of a Khmer Tale

This story is extracted from Collection of Folk Story, vol. 4, published by Buddhist Institute, Phnom Penh, 1966,p.1-10, and is translated to English by David Chandler, Facing the Cambodian Past,1996, First ed. Silkworm Books Chang Mai,p.79-81

Yama The basic ambiguity,

complexity, & uncertainty of the environment

Buddha The organization

development tools required to leave the influence of the

realms

Ignorance Organization

start-up

Consciousness The firming of values, beliefs

and perception

Karma Setting

organization trajectory

Name & Form

Paths & rigidities

Senses The ability to

adapt Contact

Awareness of potential

opportunities

Perception Evaluation &

action

Attachment To the past or

the future

Craving

Self interest

Rebirth learning is

paramount to change

Existence necessary

capabilities to change

Death Require

innovation & adaptation

The “cognitive processes” of an

organization

Realms or “states of mind” of an organization

The realm of the Deva Success in the past, arrogant, in

denial, blind to the environment, irrelevant to the market, Usually

large companies in stable environments The realm of the Azura

Ambitious, aggressive, outwardly pious, win-lose

strategies, suspicious, vigilant, suits organizations in

dynamic environments.

The realm of the Manusya Paradoxical, hope yet doubt, high aspirations, willing to experiment but get lost in process, able to learn, can be non-conformist, suitable for organizations engaged in highly technical tasks.

The realm of Naraka Sense of low self-efficacy and

failure, depression, hopelessness, little control over environment, not

much interest in anything, no market orientation, usually firms in declining

industries.

The realm of the Triyangyoni Short-term orientation, rent

seeking, no innovation, no investment, impulsive

decision making, nepotistic, usually production

orientated organizations.

The realm of the Preta High growth high profit

orientation, trend setters, compulsive, can lose focus on long term strategies, usually

conglomerates. Physical,

emotion & intellectual

energy

The basic paradoxes an organization faces

Little by little, the girls take to eating their food raw. Upset by this, they try to go back to her mother, but she thinks they are lying to her. She chases them back to the forest.

At the pond when they return, the smouldering wood has gone out but some of the corn has begun to grow. The girls eat it raw, along with shellfish, as the guardian spirit has directed them to do. For three months, the spirit keeps wild animals away from the children and the pond, and after six months, the girls had grown downy feathers all over their bodies, and their arms had turned into wings. They could fly onto branches now, and their new claws could grip the branches or pluck fruit…Their lips narrowed into beaks, and they lost their ability to talk. In their hearts, all the same, they knew they were people, not animals, even if when they tried to talk, they had animals’ voices.

Meanwhile their mother’s second husband had been sent to prison. The mother repents and comes to redeem her daughters. Even though they are birds, she can still recognize them, and she follows them deeper and deeper into the forest, while they call out to her, “We are released from our humanity; we have turned into animals, and we are far more beautiful. Don’t come near us!” the mother hears only the phrase koun lok (“child of the world,” translated as “humanity”). She runs on after them, runs out of breath and dies.

This story metaphorically reveals the mysteries of life, our real selves and social interaction. Key words, which could be used to convey these meanings include: mind/body, interaction, clinging/repelling, order/disorder, pleasant/unpleasant, and some-thing more, associated with terms like process, change, contiguity, and adaptive ability, etc. This story shows us the possibility of conflict within each individual, conflict between individual and individual, and also social conflicts, as well as the engine that produces reality for each individual and society, and the way this engine works. Through this story, we can see how the dynamics of interaction plays a critical role in shaping our reality.

While Charles Darwin tried to explain how animals evolved to be humans, this story explains how humans can evolve to be animals. 1. In row 1 the girls are touched by the bonding relationship between themselves and their parents. They experience a bonding relationship when both mother and father are favoured parents, providing them with love, care, and support that they are attached to. This bonding provides meaning to the girls’ lives, which determine realities for them. 2. In row 2 the girls are touched by the defective bonding relation between the girls to their parents. The absence of the father from the family leaves mother as a widow to struggle with work so that she can feed the family. There is a break in the bonding relationship between the girls and their mother. The relationship between the mother and her second husband mark a serious threat to the bonding relationship between the mother and her children. Finally the mother decides to abandon the girls since the girls are considered as obstacles to the bonding relationship between mother and the second husband. Here is the point that human creature’s characteristics is thus: when one clings to one thing, one repels another thing that is an obstacle to his or her clinging.

3. In row 3 the abandoned girls suffer from a defective bonding relationship. To them life in the forest, in which their bonding relationship to mother, to their selves, that used to be the shelter for life, are severed, is like breaking their souls and bodies into pieces. The more fear of the forest they have the more they recall their experience at home with parents that used to be their womb of security. The more they try to repel their situation in the forest the more they try to restore the bonding relationship, their shelter. As the result of that attempt the more they suffer from the conflicts caused by these opposing forces that break their personalities into pieces. Finally to survive the girls are determined to adapt to the situation in the forest. They eat raw food. While their interactions with human culture are severed, little by little the girls begin to meld themselves to the forest through their interactions with the forest creatures in a way that little by little their cultural links to humanness are eroded.

4. In row 4 the fragmentary souls of the girls touched with humanness, are reconfigured through interactions with the forest. The girls adopt human personalities modified by their wild life. The girls lose their ability with language, the very medium for human production and culture transmission. Little by little the girls’s behaviour and personalities change to half-human-half-animal beings, which are waiting to become completely animal like. When they become completely animal they repel the state of being human. However, during the time of evolution the girls suffer from the conflicts between opposing forces that determine their realities and way of life, such as their struggles against the distinction between humanness and animality that are modifying their personalities and behaviours. 5. In columns 1, and 2, it is clear that the personalities of the girls and the mother change according to the context in which they interact. Meanings assigned to every one depend on the way individuals interact. The reality for the girls changes from happy children to unhappy children, from unhappy girls to animals. These are determined by social interaction, likewise personality and behaviour of the mother. Without her relationship to her second husband the mother would have assigned a good meaning to her daughters. With her relationship to her second husband, her daughters become obstacles for her. When repelled by the second husband, she realised that her daughters are important to her.

Extracted from: Hel Rithy (2004) Dependent Origination: Towards a Theory of Meaning

Publishing

Conclusion

Any reality is only seen in the mind and therefore really part

of our imagination

Most people have (sources of) multiple identities where some are easier than others to discover and appreciate.

Follow the relationships

TypesConflicts

Shared meanings

Who controls the narrative?

It is impossible for us to see things untouched by our own view, since the observer and the observed are within

the same entity- Margaret Mead

It is the theory that determines what we can observe

- Albert Einstein

The Tools of Trade

Creative sensitivityComprehension

Skills

Empathy Template and Trap Theories

Syntax

Metaphor

No Sensitivity High Sensitivity

Ability to see the environment in different ways

Creative Sensitivity

Openness to novelty – the ability to reason with relatively novel forms of stimuli,Alertness to distinction – the ability to distinguish minute differences in the details of an object, action, or environment,Sensitivity to different contexts- tasks and abilities will differ according to the situational context,Awareness of multiple perspectives – the ability to think dialectically, andOrientation in the present- paying attention to here and now.

A natural talent that can be learned

Your research career should not

be about…..

Is Blue Ocean Strategy a new

Marketing theory or a narrative?

Is just a beginning