GUEST EDITORIAL
The rhetoric and narratives in
management research
Slawek Magala and Marja Flory
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on the subject of the rhetoric
and narratives in management research.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews selected contributions to the 4th Conference
on Rhetoric and Narratives in Management Research held on March 24-26, 2011 at the ESADE campus
in Barcelona.
Findings – The paper reveals various views of rhetoric and narratives in management research
including plagiarism, individual (personal) narratives , material and spiritual narratives and deception
in storytelling.
Originality/value – The paper provides a useful introduction to the various papers on rhetoric and
narratives in management research.
Keywords Rhetoric, Narratives, Management research
Paper type General review
This special issue, on the rhetoric and narratives in management research has been
assembled by two special issue editors, Dr Marja Flory (Rotterdam School of
Management, Erasmus University) and Prof. Dr Alfonso Sauquet (ESADE Universitat
Ramon Llul, Barcelona, Spain). The papers have been selected from the contributions
to the 4th Conference on Rhetoric and Narratives in Management Research held on
March 24-26, 2011 at the ESADE campus in Barcelona. We had already published the
selection of papers from the former, 3rd conference, but this time, everything is
different. First, the editors have refrained from publishing the keynote speakers –
Deirdre McCloskey, Barbara Czarniawska and the undersigned, to mention but a few.
This had, incidentally, saved the editor-in-chief of JOCM and a co-author of the present
editorial from a tricky dilemma – had they proposed to select my contribution, I would
be torn between a necessity to conform to their wishes (cutting myself out would have
been a mild form of censorship) and a lurking suspicion that publishing myself in a
journal, of which I am the editor-in-chief, is not exactly the spitting image of academic
neutrality and rational objectivity. This is mentioned for a reason. One of the most
ethically interesting papers in the present special issue has been written by Thomas
Basbøll and it bears the title “Legitimate peripheral irritations: the ethos of critique and
the scholarship of integration in the study of sensemaking”. Rarely has an author
buried his (it is a he this time) intriguing message behind a more clumsy, lengthy and
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm
Marja Flory has co-written the present editorial on behalf of Alfonso Sauquet, her co-editor of
this special issue.
Rhetoric and
narratives
201
Journal of Organizational Change
Management
Vol. 25 No. 2, 2012
pp. 201-203
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0953-4814
DOI 10.1108/09534811211214026