Search results for "narrative"
showing 10 items of 1060 documents
A narrative approach for organizational learning in a diverse organisation
2006
PurposeThis paper aims to construct an approach referred to as “the participatory narrative” for organizational learning in diverse organizations. The approach is grounded in an understanding of organizational learning as the process of social construction which is narratively mediated.Design/methodology/approachThe participatory narrative is constructed theoretically. Additionally, the approach and its potential use are illustrated by means of a practical example.FindingsIt is shown that the participatory narrative enables interplay between various perspectives of diverse people. It makes it possible to overcome the temporal and spatial limits of organisational learning situations and help…
Connecting work and learning: design engineers' learning at work
2006
PurposeThe paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the course of it as perceived by the designers themselves. The aim is also to examine their learning through the various individual and social processes, which take place in the workplace.Design/methodology/approachThe ethnographic approach in this paper, with its use of combined and qualitative data gathering and analytical methods, was selected to approach the aim described above. Observations in two Finnish high‐tech companies and interviews with 18 designers were conducted. The observations and interviews were…
Vocational teachers in the face of a major educational reform: individual ways of negotiating professional identities
2009
This paper examines how vocational teachers negotiate their professional identity in the context of a major externally imposed curriculum reform. The focus is on the teachers’ orientations towards the reform in its initial stage. Sixteen Finnish vocational teachers were interviewed using open‐ended narrative interviews. The data were analysed in accordance with data‐driven qualitative analysis methods. From the teachers’ accounts, three main orientations towards the reform were identified: a resistant orientation, an inconsistent orientation and an approving orientation, each based on the teachers’ individual self‐positioning towards the reform. Each orientation is illustrated using two nar…
Work‐related identity in individual and social learning at work
2009
PurposeThe aim of this study is to investigate how workers' work‐related identity is related to various forms of workplace learning. The study also aims to show how changes in the organization affect both learning and the work‐related identity construction of employees.Design/methodology/approachIn‐depth interviews with four design engineers were conducted in 2000 and 2007 in Finland. Narrative analysis was used to construct four stories that were compared at two different points in time to find out what changes and development took place in relation to experiences of learning and work‐related identity.FindingsThe findings suggest that learning and work‐related identity are related to one a…
Narrativity and its application in business ethics research
2018
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a narrative framework for doing empirical research into business ethics and shows, through two examples, how the framework can be applied in practice in this context. The focus is on interview-based research. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical research based on literature review was conducted. Findings In the developed narrative framework, two main kinds of analysis are distinguished: an analysis of the narrative and a narrative analysis. An analysis of the narrative is a matter of classifying and producing taxonomies out of the data. The purpose of a narrative analysis is to construct a story or stories based on the data. Narrative an…
Understanding youth athletes' life designing processes through dream day narratives
2018
A number of studies have investigated career pathways in elite sport with retrospective designs, but few studies have explored how youth elite athletes construct narratives about their future lives and how their dreams and hopes relate to their careers in sport and other life contexts. We drew on career construction theory to understand youth elite athletes' dreams for the future and prominent life themes. Seventeen Finnish youth elite athletes (7 men, 10 women) in the first year of upper secondary sport school participated in the study. They were asked to make visual representations of their “dream days”, and these were used as aids for reflection in low-structured interviews where partici…
“Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur” : positioning analysis of written narratives
2021
PurposeThe negative stereotypes concerning late-career workers are found to prevail and lead to negative circulation of narratives and actions between individuals and societies. Using the context of late-career entrepreneurs, the paper aims to find an alternative and a more positive narrative concerning late-career work by focusing on entrepreneurs and the narrative positioning related to them.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a narrative-positioning analysis, cycling through three levels of analysis and then returning to level two, in order to study our sample of seven narratives written by Finnish late-career entrepreneurs. The authors present in detail one story-telling narrati…
Hands-on optics and photonics outreach in Riga
2014
A long-term exposition focused on optics and photonics was created in Institute of Atomic Physics and Spectroscopy at University of Latvia in 2010. Considering unpopularity of science in Latvia and lack of broadly accessible hands-on outreach activities for school children, as well as rapid development of advanced photonic technologies, this exposition was meant to involve more students to the natural sciences and modern technologies. Exposition covers 10 topics of optics – colors, diffraction, interference, polarization, reflection, liquid crystals, gas discharge, lasers, fluorescence, infrared and ultraviolet radiation. Students' visits are organized as an exciting adventure, which differ…
The premise, promise and disillusion of the ADHD categorisation - family narrative about the child's broken school trajectory
2019
This study presents co-narrated school experiences of a young Finnish girl diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and those of her parents. The discourse analysis of the family interview focused on the discrepant ways family members gave meanings to and mobilised the ADHD categorisation while narrating their broken school trajectory. The results showed that the ADHD diagnosis was laden with the promise of the whole family being recognised differently by the school. However, this cultural promise proved disillusioning as daughter's support needs and parents' expertise were not recognised nor did the diagnostic category emancipate from stigmatising identities and blame…
Interpreting Distress Narratives in Italian Reception Centres: The need for caution when negotiating empathy
2020
This paper examines the interpreting of migrant narratives in reception centres in Italy, based on first-hand data collected by the authors, and discusses the potential risks of empathic bonding. The data consists in recorded mediated interactions between migrants, public service interpreters and service providers, as well as recorded interviews. The data show how asylum seekers and migrants construct their narratives both to reflect their own life experiences and to be as persuasive as possible to improve the chances of a successful asylum application. Public service interpreters – or ‘language mediators’ as they are termed in the Italian setting – may struggle to position themselves profe…