Narrative inquiry

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Narrative Inquiry emerged as a discipline within the broader field of Knowledge Management. It is an approach to understanding behavior (markets, employees, citizens) through large collections of anecdotal material. It should be clearly distinguished from storytelling. Narrative Inquiry is a fairly recent movement in social science qualitative research. It has been employed as a tool for analysis in the fields of cognitive science, organizational studies, knowledge theory, and education studies, among others.

Other recent advances include the development of quantitative methods and tools based on the large volume capture of fragmented anecdotal material, and that which is self signified or indexed at the point of capture. According to D. Clandinin and F. Connelly, Narrative Inquiry is an understanding of “narrative as both phenomena under study and method of study”^[1]

1 Background
2 Narrative Knowledge
3 John Dewey's Influence
4 Interpretive Research
5 Practices
6 Criticisms
7 References
8 Bibliography
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] Background

Clandinin and Connelly define Narrative Inquiry as a method that uses the following field texts as data sources: stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos (and other artifacts), and life experience.^[2]

Narrative Inquiry emerged not just as a form of qualitative research, but from the field of Knowledge Management, which shares the sphere of Information Management.^[3] Thus Narrative Inquiry focuses on the organization of human knowledge more than merely the collection and processing of data. It also implies that knowledge itself is considered valuable and noteworthy even when known by only one person.

Knowledge Management was coined as a discipline in the 1990s as a method of identifying, representing, sharing, and communicating knowledge.^[4] Knowledge Management and Narrative Inquiry share the idea of Knowledge transfer, a theory which seeks to transfer unquantifiable elements of knowledge, including experience. Knowledge, if not communicated, becomes arguably use-less, literally unused.

Philosopher Andy Clark speculates that the ways in which minds deal with narrative (second-hand information) and memory (first-hand perception) are cognitively indistinguishable. Narrative, then, becomes an effective and powerful method of transferring knowledge.

[edit] Narrative Knowledge

Whereas Knowledge transfer and Knowledge Management seek to organize, or capture, tacit knowledge and preserve it for future users, Narrative Inquiry plays a role in how this knowledge is stored and perceived.

Narrative is a powerful tool in the transfer, or sharing, of knowledge, one that is bound to cognitive issues of memory, constructed memory, and perceived memory. Jerome Bruner discusses this issue in his 1990 book, Acts of Meaning, where he considers the narrative form as a non-neutral rhetorical account that aims at “illocutionary intentions,” or the desire to communicate meaning.^[5] This technique might be called “narrative” or defined as a particular branch of storytelling within the narrative method. Bruner’s approach places the narrative in time, to “assume an experience of time” rather than just making reference to historical time.^[6]

This narrative approach captures the emotion of the moment described, rendering the event active rather than passive, infused with the latent meaning being communicated by the teller. Two concepts are thus tied to narrative storytelling: memory and notions of time, both as time as found in the past and time as re-lived in the present.^[7]

A narrative method accepts the idea that knowledge can be held in stories that can be relayed, stored, and retrieved.^[8]

[edit] John Dewey's Influence

John Dewey is credited for influencing the American field of education in addition to his influence on the social sciences and psychology. His philosophical ideas remain popular primarily in America. Dewey informs Narrative Inquiry in terms of the nature of experience. Dewey viewed experience as having both social and personal meaning, believing that people should be analyzed both as individuals and as part of a group or social context.^[9] In this view of experience nothing and no one exists in isolation.

Dewey’s criterion of experience is that of “continuity:” that all experiences are shaped by previous ones and will continue to shape those that come after. Despite difficulty in defining this term, it is clear how the emphasis on individual experience would lend itself to storytelling methodologies, and how the idea of continuity relates to shared knowledge, or Knowledge Management/Transfer.

In Narrative Inquiry each experience is perceived of as being on a continuum, that of “imagined now, some imagined past, or some imagined future."^[10]

[edit] Interpretive Research

The idea of imagination is where Narrative Inquiry and storytelling converge within narrative methodologies. Within Narrative Inquiry, storytelling seeks to better understand the “why” behind human action.^[11] Story collecting as a form of Narrative Inquiry allows the research participants to put the data into their own words and reveal the latent “why” behind their assertions.

“Interpretive research” is a form of field-research methodology that also searches for the subjective "why."^[12] Interpretive research, using methods termed “storytelling” or “Narrative Inquiry,” does not attempt to predefine independent variables and dependent variables, but acknowledges context and seeks to “understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them.”^[13]

Two influential minds in the narrative research model are Mark Johnson (professor) and Alasdair MacIntyre. In his work on experiential, embodied metaphors, Johnson encourages the researcher to challenge “how you see knowledge as embodied, embedded in a culture based on narrative unity,” the “construct of continuity in individual lives.”^[14]

[edit] Practices

Feminist scholars have found narrative analysis useful for data collection of perspectives that have been traditionally marginalized. The method is also appropriate to cross-cultural research. As Michael Brecher and Frank P. Harvey advocate, when asking unusual questions it is logical to ask them in an unusual manner.^[15] The Narrative Inquiry and storytelling methods require researchers to consider their studies culturally and theoretically, with particular attention to the “why,” or meaning, of the narrative story.

[edit] Criticisms

Narrative Inquiry is seen by many as something between the formal and the ad hoc, either contrived or piecemeal. It is perceived as an unorthodox method of formal inquiry being used in scholarly or scientific fields of research. Some might argue that just as Knowledge Management has had to fight for a place in the realm of “accepted” academic fields, so too will Narrative Inquiry and “storytelling as method.”

In this relatively young field there is some disagreement. While some argue that there is a clear distinction between Narrative Inquiry and storytelling, others might describe Narrative Inquiry as a form of Organizational Storytelling. It could be argued that “story as method” allows for a relaxation of “accuracy” in order to allow the greater meaning of the narrative to come through, i.e., that the veracity of meaning out-ranks the veracity of detail.

Many advocate the alternative nature of this method of discourse analysis and present diverse methods for deploying it. However, Narrative Inquiry challenges the philosophy behind data-gathering and questions the idea of “objective” data.^[16] Narrative Inquiry is additionally criticized for not being “theoretical enough."^[17]

[edit] References

^ D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 3.
^ D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 98-115.
^ See Harlan Cleveland, The Knowledge Executive: Leadership in an Information Society (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989).
^ See Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson, eds., The Culture and Power of Knowledge: Inquiries into Contemporary Societies (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); and, Fritz Machlup, Knowledge and Knowledge Production (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
^ Jerome S. Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 85.
^ Donald Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 132.
^ See Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
^ Ronald E. Fry, Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation: Reports from the Field (Westport: CN: Quorum Books, 2002), 166.
^ D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 2.
^ D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 2.
^ Nona Lyons and Vicki Kubler LaBoskey, Narrative Inquiry in Practice: Advancing the Knowledge of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002), 163.
^ H. Klein and M. D. Myers, “A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies” MIS Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1999): 67-93.
^ Heinz K. Klein and Michael D. Myers, “A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems,” MIS Quarterly 23, no. 1 (March 1999): 69.
^ Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative Inquiry, 3. See also George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980).
^ Michael Brecher and Frank P. Harvey, Millennial Reflections on International Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 326.
^ David M. Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 83, 98.
^ Clandinin and Connelly, 42. See also Laurel Richardson, “Narrative and Sociology,” in Representation in Eth-nography, edited by John Van Maanen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).

[edit] Bibliography

David M. Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).

Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges, Narratives in Social Science Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004).

D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000).

D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, “Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry.” Educational Researcher 19, no. 5 (June-July 1990): 2-14.

C. Conle, “Narrative Inquiry: Research Tool and Medium for Professional Development,” European Journal of Teacher Education 23, no.1 (March 2000): 49-63.

Donald F. Hones, “Known in Part: The Transformational Power of Narrative Inquiry,” Qualitative Inquiry 4, no. 2 (1998): 225-248.

G. Lucius-Hoene and A. Deppermann, “Narrative Identity Empiricized: A Dialogical and Positioning Approach to Autobiographical Research,” Narrative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2000): 199-222.

Nona Lyons and Vicki Kubler LaBoskey, Narrative Inquiry in Practice: Advancing the Knowledge of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002).

Lene Nielsen and Sabine Madsen, “Storytelling as Method for Sharing Knowledge across IT Projects,” Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2006

Gary Oliver and Dave Snowden, "Patterns of Narrative in Organizational Knowledge Sharing," in Knowledge Management and Narratives: Organizational Effectiveness Through Storytelling, Georg Schreyogg and Joch Koch, eds. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2005).

Donald Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988).

Dave Snowden, “Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-Awareness,” Journal of Knowledge Management 6, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 100-111.

Dave Snowden, “Narrative Patterns: the perils and possibilities of using story in organisations,” in Creating Value With Knowledge, Eric Lesser and Laurence Prusak, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).