The Narration Of Organizational Culture Story:a Way To Construct And Transmit Organizational Culture

Organizational culture has gaining a more and more important position in the competitions among the companies. It is necessary for the organizations to find a good way to construct and transmit the organizational culture. This research aims to provide the organizations with an effective and efficient method to construct and transmit the organizational culture by the application of the narrative theory in storytelling. Storytelling has already been used in the management field like the brand promotion. This research combines the storytelling and organizational culture to create a new perspective for construction and transmission the organizational culture.By studying Robins’ organizational culture dimension, this research classifies the themes of organizational culture stories into different groups to make good organizational culture stories. Based on the Balter’s structuralism, the research discusses the context of the organizational culture story in three levels: the functional-level, the action-level, and the narration-level. With these foundations, this research put forward a framework for the narration of the organizational culture stories.On the other hand, this research also uses the case study method, selecting two listed companies, Shenhua Group from China and Peabody Energy from America, to collect their organizational culture stories to verify this framework, which are both representative in their organizational culture construction. The Shenhua Energy magazine of Shenhua, the Conveyor of Peabody, and their official websites are used for organizational culture story collection.Through the comparisons between the two companies’ organizational culture stories, 107 stories from Shenhua and 95 stories from Peabody, this research also finds some tips in using this framework. Firstly, the emphasis on themes of the organizational culture stories of different organizations varies with the situations of the companies as well as the policies of the state. Secondly, the narrators should balance the authenticity, accessibility, and infectivity for the material choosing of the stories to achieve the best effects of the stories. Thirdly, the story structure can be arranged according to the real needs, like the flashback method can be used to emphasis the key points. This study enriches the current researches of the applications of narrative theory in the management field, and is of value for the companies in construction and transmission organizational culture by the way of storytelling.