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Tonya and Anete are new players at sc’MOI, but this theme emerges at the tail end of sc’MOI so they are best to explicate it. This chapter describes the theoretical contributions of quantum storytelling theory (QST) and practice. Building on the application of complexity theory in the hard sciences as well as social contexts and theory on multimodal constituency, this chapter considers the areas of overlap and difference between quantum storytelling and its theoretical fellows, with special attention given to sociomateriality, storytelling, feminism, fractal, and complexity theory.

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.

The focus of this chapter is quantum dialectical storytelling and its contribution to generate anticipatory knowledge of the future through the intra-play between the ante-narrative and the anti-narrative. The theoretical framework on quantum dialectical storytelling is based upon Boje’s triad storytelling framework interfused with Hegelian dialectics and Baradian diffraction. Through the inspiration of Judith Butler’s performative theory, Riach, Rumens, and Tyler (2016) introduce the concept of the anti-narrative as a critical reflexive methodology. By drawing on Hegel’s work on the dialectical phenomenology of critical reflexive self-consciousness, a dialectical pre-reflexive and reflexive framework emerges as intra-weaving modes of being-in-the-world toward future.

This chapter proposes a quantum relational process philosophy as an approach for studying organization-in-becoming as a world-creating process. Furthermore, the quantum relational process philosophy is tied to quantum storytelling. Whereas the quantum relational process philosophy outlines a philosophy of a processual ontology, epistemology, and ethic, quantum storytelling provides the storytelling medium through which such an ontology, epistemology, and ethic emerges through articulation and actualization. As such, the two approaches are introduced as inseparable from each other.

The focus of this chapter is to unfold the ties between the quantum relational process philosophy and quantum storytelling through the perspective of the quantum relational process philosophy itself.

The proposed quantum relational process philosophy is defined as Being-in-Becoming. Thereby, this approach is suggested as an alternative to the “Being” perspective and the “Becoming” perspective or at least as a further development of the becoming perspective. These latter two perspectives present two different ways of viewing organizational change: development and transformation.

The being perspective relies on substance ontology acknowledging the existence of entities: that “which is.” In substance ontology, however, entities such as individuals and organizations are viewed as existing in themselves in fixed space-time frames. This view entails a rather static and stable ontology, perceiving the organization as a ready-made world of stable, unchanging entities. This perspective is often referred to as the approach of building the organizational world through intervention and control of change.

As a contrast, the becoming perspective relies on a process ontology while the organization is perceived as a sea of constant flux and change through which the organization emerges on the way. In this process-oriented perspective, attention is directed toward “that which is becoming.” In this perspective, the organization is perceived as a world-making phenomenon emerging through ceaseless processes of transformation. This approach is often referred to as the dwelling approach, that is, to dwell in the world-making phenomenon letting it happen. This perspective tends to ignore that which exists, that is the ready-made forms, and only focus on that which is becoming.

In this chapter, the proposed being-in-becoming perspective views the tension between being and becoming as a dialectical interplay that is decisive to organizational transformation. However, in the being-in-becoming perspective, “entities” are viewed from a quantum perspective whereby being-in-becoming differs from the substance ontology in its view of the nature of “entities.” In this perspective, the organization is viewed as a dialectical interplay between, at the one hand, the organizational form(ing) of life and, at the other hand, the aliveness of unfolding and transforming living life-worlds of being-in-the-world in fluid space and open time. This dialectical interplay is conceived as central in organizational world-creating processes.

The aim of the chapter is to develop a conceptual framework of a quantum relational process philosophy that embraces the dialectics of transforming organizations. The contribution is to be capable of understanding the performative consequences of dialectic to organizational transformation viewed from the being-in-becoming perspective of the quantum relational process philosophy.

Through the contribution of Heidegger, Hegel, Aristotle, and Boje, and further enriched by Barad, Bakhtin, and Shotter, a conceptual framework is developed for understanding, analyzing, and problematizing dialectical organizational world-creating.

This framework is called “Fourfold World-Creating.” The fourfold world-creating framework keeps the dialectic of organizational transformation at its center while it at the same time take into consideration the dialectical interplay of ontology, epistemology, and ethic. In this sense, the framework is proposed as quantum relational process philosophy. The incorporation of ethic in the quantum relational process philosophy represents an additional contribution of the chapter.

The fourfold world-creating framework is furthermore suggested to be conceived as a quantum relational process philosophy of the antenarrative dimension in David Boje’s quantum storytelling triad framework encompassing: (1) the narrative, (2) the living stories, and (3) the antenarrative. In his recent research, David Boje has a developed a dialectical perspective on his storytelling framework. Following in line with this thinking, this chapter suggests viewing (1) the narrative as the ready-made form, (2) the living stories as the living life-worlds, and (3) the antenarrative as fourfold world-creating.

In this sense, the proposed dialectical fourfold world-creating framework and its embeddedness in the quantum relational process philosophy contributes to our understanding of the research contributes of antenarrative storytelling in organizational studies.

As findings, the chapter proposes what could be considered as ontological, epistemological, and ethical key constituents in dialectical organizational world-creating. The contribution of these findings encompasses an analytical framework for (1) understanding the dialectical, transformative movements of the organization as well as (2) analyzing and problematizing the cease of dialectical tensions that seems to lock the organization in a particular state of being, only capable of repeating and reproducing its ready-made world in fixed space-time frames.

We live in organizations addicted to problematic narratives. My purpose is to develop intelligent action understandings of how to care for organizations addicted to problematic elevator pitch narratives and one-sided stories by mapping quantum storytelling “Tamara-Land” forces ignored beneath and between them both (Boje, 1995). Tamara-land is the everyday activity of people in organizations chasing stories spatially distributed in different rooms, hallways, buildings that are temporally simultaneous, with materialities that are agential to the telling. For example, in this conference, the immersive theater into Tamara-Land is done in Steel Case open office spaces, as audience decides which actors to follow as they exit each scene. You cannot chase them all, and cannot be everywhere at once in this spacetimemattering. Quantum storytelling does not search for simple word or text messaging tag lines to explain open offices. Quantum storytelling uncovers deep behavior patterns of the spacetimemattering. “Quantum storytelling includes nondiscursive and behavioral aspects embodied in the storyteller’s life, in their living story behavioral-performative agentiality” (Boje, 1995, p. 114) and in nonhuman’s materialism featured in Karen Barad’s (2007) and Anete Strand’s material storytelling work. Quantum storytelling of Tamara-Land mapping at macro scale traces the interplay of people, planet, and profit (aka Triple Bottom Line, 3BL) but does not reduce it to imagined profitability metrics. I will critique 3BL for not proposing any method to measure people and planet first and by default reducing all dimensions to just bottom line profit measures. The consequence is that a runaway, maximizing fractal, known in socioeconomic work as the Taylor–Fayol–Weber rationality or “TFW virus” (Worley, Zardet, Bonnet, & Savall, 2015, pp. 23–24; Savall& Peron, 2015), attains functional structuralism (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). In quantum storytelling fractal work, it’s “TFW fractal” profiteering that is destroying both planet and people, at an ever-accelerating rate (Boje & Henderson, 2014; Boje, 2015; Henderson & Boje, 2015). My contribution is to propose a different fractal pattern, the Mandelbrot fractal that actually sets limits on runaway fractal appetite. Both the 3BL and the VA techno-digital fractal narrative spiral more and more materials, energy, and people into the risk of an addictive TFW virus pattern, without limit.

I am a bike-sharing activist at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and am using quantum storytelling, as well as ethnographic, methods to study its bike-sharing implementation process. Moreover, quantum storytelling is, by its very nature, an intervention into the process it observes and, in this case, utilized as a means to encourage the university-governing entities to support and fund a bike-sharing program. Quantum storytelling is formally defined as “the interplay of quantum understandings with storytelling processes,” including their counternarratives (Boje, 2014, p. 100). It is not human dramatic action simply put into text or context. Rather, it is establishing a pattern of assemblages of actants – human, nonhuman (animals, plants, etc.), and material (in this case, bikes, paths, and so on) – and providing a storytelling that accounts for their inseparable spacetimemattering (Boje, 2014; Boje & Henderson, 2014). Additionally, quantum storytelling helps make explicit what Heidegger (1962) calls fore-having, fore-structuring, fore-conception, fore-telling, and fore-caring (as developed Boje, Svane, & Gergerich, in review). It allows for antenarrative preview of the way to operationalize bike-sharing through visual media, including pictures, documents, five-year plans, campus maps, bikes, and the riders themselves. Through this presentation, I will show embodied practices stemming from quantum storytelling, and do so using both a Barthean S/Z and Bojean antenarrative analysis of the bikeshare implementation process.

This chapter describes the theoretical contributions of Fractal Change Management (FCM) in relation to Quantum Storytelling theory and practice. Building on the application of complexity theory in the hard sciences as well as social contexts, this chapter considers the areas of overlap and difference between FCM and its theoretical fellows, summarizing selected concepts from FCM, considering the strengths and weaknesses of the method in various contexts, as well as its development over time. Prior studies in the yoga and nonprofit communities are briefly discussed along with ongoing work with software developers. Areas for further study are examined in detail, as a way to establish an antenarrative for this line of inquiry that honors its lineage as well as its contributions to the body of knowledge.

This chapter is about quantum storytelling and improvisation and how to use quantum storytelling as an improv theater for social change. Quantum storytelling, in its fore-caring, is about producing an ethics of care where none exists. In the quantum storytelling theater for change, we envision a stage with human and non-human actors (animals, plants, quantum wave/particles) and ways to collapse waves of quantum potentiality into new possibilities for human survival, for posthumanist survival.

We will assert that this happens through improvisation: something called “quantum storytelling with improv.” Our example for this chapter is a theater company we created in Las Cruces, NM, called “Veterans Theater” in which improv is the performance approach. Boje teaches in the belly of the beast (the Business College) at New Mexico State University, a course called “Leadership Is Theater in Society” that uses improv. It is not only about improv but it is also based on Theater of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979, 2002) and Improvisation for the Theater (Spolin, 1983); it also draws from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970) and Rules for Radicals (Alinsky, 1971), both of which call on improv as a process for social change. Improv is a vital leadership skill in complex polycultural systems, which is the future of business. Leadership theory is dead. Get over it! Or, resurrect it with improv!

The field of interorganizational studies is not currently known for applying qualitative methodologies with the same enthusiasm as statistically‐based survey techniques. A review of recent developments in qualitative methodologies reveals several techniques which can be fruitfully applied to the study of interorganizational (IO) networks. This paper extends the meaning‐based social definitionist perspective to the study of IO networks, by drawing upon the relevant theoretical aspects of social phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology. The social definitionist perspective is concerned with theories and methodologies relevant to the social definition and construction of meaning in multiple actor settings. Such a meaning‐based perspective would facilitate the application of qualitative methodologies to IO networks, in parallel with similar developments in organizational behavior. The paper identifies four specific types of qualitative analyses for IO studies: phenomenological typification, domain analysis, componential analysis, and conversational analysis.