Stories of the Subaltern

In line with many other disciplines, organisation theory has taken the ‘narrative turn’ in recent years–an almost inevitable move after the sustained assault on positivistic research, with researchers increasingly using story-telling and folklore to understand organisational politics, culture, and change. Concurrently, folklorists have become interested in work and organisational lore and have begun to engage with the literature on organisation theory. These two movements suggest that organisation theory and folklore might fruitfully engage with one another more intensively and extensively, especially since a number of research themes are shared by and overlap both disciplines. This seminar and paper focuses on one of these themes, namely the subaltern.