“Storytelling Organization” is Being Transformed into Discourse of “Digital Organization”

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Abstract

Storytelling organization is transforming. Epic stories of lived experience are no longer communicable in corporation, schools, or government; it is only discourse that matters. It has taken a long time. Slowly, the invention of the printing press gave birth to the novel and the newspaper, which convey discourse as text with hardly any epic story wisdom at all. Now we are witnessing the proliferation of digital discourse inventions (texting, email, digital measures) that are radically displacing “storytelling organization”, with “virtual organization” discursively explicating everything without any grounding in lived experience wisdom. Managing and organizing have changed, as the “storytelling organization” has become the “virtual organization”. In this essay, I integrate the storytelling theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Gertrude Stein, Walter Benjamin, and the Kaupapa Māori work of Linda Smith and Graham Smith. I conclude that with the decay of the storytelling organization, without “true storytelling”, we descend into fake news, fake discourse, and meaninglessness. We become like the wisdomless lemmings following one another over the cliff.