The Storytelling Science Paradigm: Evoking the Transformative Power of Indigenous Ontological Antenarratives in Curious Conversation

Abstract

South African scholars, like most scholars in the developing world, have sold the idea that social constructivism is the gold standard of qualitative management research. In this chapter, we caution against this subordination to unquestioned conventions and offer a process relational ontology as an alternative to social constructivism that is often punted by most qualitative research programmes and textbooks. We also debunk the idea that ‘grounded theory’ exists by delving into epistemology and showing how science is ‘self-correcting’ rather than ‘tabula rasa’. Instead of boxing business ethics knowledge, as has been done by the case study gurus, we encourage business and organisational ethicists to own their indigenous heritage through storytelling science based on the self-correcting method underpinned by Popperian and Peircian epistemological thought. This chapter encourages business management researchers to move towards more profound ethical knowledge by refuting and falsifying false assumptions in each phase of the study, in a sequence of self-correcting storytelling phases. This is what Karl Popper called trial and error, and what C.S. Peirce called self-correcting by the triadic of Abduction–Induction–Deduction. We offer a novel method for accomplishing this aim that we call ‘Conversational Interviews’ that are based on antenarrative storytelling sciences. Our chapter aims to evoking the transformative power of indigenous ontological antenarratives in authentic conversation in order to solve immediate local problems ad fill the many institutional voids that plague the South(ern)-/African context.

Citation

Boje, D.M. and Rosile, G.A. (2022), "The Storytelling Science Paradigm: Evoking the Transformative Power of Indigenous Ontological Antenarratives in Curious Conversation", Thakhathi, A. (Ed.) Transcendent Development: The Ethics of Universal Dignity (Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations, Vol. 25), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 15-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-209620220000025003