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The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which narratives of collaborations tagged as successful may be constructed around common characterizations of participants, in order to provide insights to the ways in which stories may be constructed as vehicles for the adoption or adaptation of good or promising practices.

Qualitative interview data from three collaborative situations are analysed through a narrative‐centred procedure with a particular focus on micro‐stories.

The paper provides a set of recurring characterizations observed within narratives of successful collaboration and their employment within the stories offered by collaborating partners. It also suggests the relationship that these characterizations might have to the stimulation or retardation of good collaborative practices.

The paper is derived from interviews in the UK context and extrapolation to other contexts seems plausible but should be conducted cautiously and with reflection.

The particular style of narrative analysis conducted in this work has not been employed to the consideration of collaborative accounts and the characterizations derived may have utility as anchoring elements in stories of collaboration, helpful in both the elicitation and interpretation of such accounts.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of how embedding in different social networks relates to different types of action that individuals choose in the context of organizational closures, downsizing or relocations. To develop such insights, this paper focuses on three particular types of social networks, namely, intra-organizational; external professional and local community networks. These three types of networks have been frequently related to different types of action in the context of closures and relocations.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors develop the argument by integrating relevant recent literature on the salience related to embedding in different types of social networks, with a particular focus on responses to organizational closure or relocation.

The authors argue that at times of industrial decline and closure: embeddedness in intra-organizational networks can favor collective direct action; embeddedness in professional networks is likely to favor individual direct action and embeddedness in community networks can lead to individual indirect action. The authors then add nuance to the argument by considering a range of complicating factors that can constrain or enable the course (s) of action favored by particular combinations of network influences.

On a theoretical level, this paper adds to understandings of the role of network embeddedness in influencing individual and collective responses to such disruptive events; and direct or indirect forms of response. On a practical level, the authors contribute to understandings about how the employment landscape may evolve in regions affected by organizational demise, and how policymakers may study with or through network influences to develop more responsible downsizing approaches.

The purpose of this editorial is to provide an overview of content and process of development of the five papers collected in this special issue on collaboration and storying.

This guest editorial discusses the five papers in terms of their contribution both to debates on the utility of stories as data and forms of knowledge as well as to developing understandings of the research and practice of collaboration. Findings – The special issue integrates aspects of research, issues of research and connects with implications for practice.

Readers are provided with an overview of the utility of stories as data, different levels of conceptualization of stories and the kinds of insights that can flow from this form of research.

This essay addresses the topic of research lifeworlds and personal lifeworlds and what we gain and lose as researchers, and as people, from their overlaps and collisions. The essay analyses six narrative accounts of the authors lived experience of a unique collision between research and personal lifeworlds when the researcher-mother presented with her sick daughter to the hospital emergency department that served as the field site for her own research. This analysis revealed the following themes through which a researcher’s personhood animates the research process: feeling exposed but empowered; gaining conceptual clarity while opening up ethical ambiguity; and becoming liminal because of identity shifts and coping through self-reflexivity. The essay contributes to our collective understanding and shared learning of the ways a researcher’s personhood shapes, and is shaped by, the research process and (re)production of knowledge.

This paper advances what is known about emotional experiences and challenges when researching work-caused trauma in organisations and illustrates learning for researchers of work-related trauma. Viewing vulnerability as strength could be conceived as an oxymoron. The paper explains how vulnerability can lead to strength for researchers/participants and focuses on researcher reflexivity in relation to one interview with a woman leader in a small-scale qualitative study.

The research protocols of the qualitative study are outlined: pre-interview briefings, participant journaling and semi-structured interviews. Researcher reflexivity, following Hibbert's (2021) four levels of reflexive practice (embodied, emotional, rational and relational), is applied to an interview with a woman leader.

The paper illustrates how research design and recognising vulnerability as strength facilitates considerable relational work and emotional experiences. Researcher reflexivity conveys impact of work-caused trauma on participants and researchers. The paper advances understandings of vulnerability as strength in practice, emotional experiences and challenges of work-caused trauma research.

In this paper, a single case of researcher reflexivity is considered.

There are practical implications for researcher relationships with participants; demonstrating emotional awareness; responding to traumatic stories, participant distress and impact on the researcher; issues of vicarious/secondary traumatic stress; having safe psychological systems; scaffolding a process which recognises vulnerability as strength and becoming personally and methodologically vulnerable; risk of embodied and emotional impact; commitment to reflexivity and levels of reflexive practice.

There is lack of researcher reflexive accounts of practice when studying trauma. Few scholars suggest ways to support researchers in challenging and difficult research. There is silence in research exploring leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma. This paper provides a reflexive account in practice from a unique study of women leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma.

Stories and the telling of stories constitute a major part of our daily life, yet how this happens is not clearly understood. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the ways in which stories challenge the notions of knowledge that are common in the “classical” scientific tradition. It also aims to focus on the function of stories in the collaborative, interpersonal and inter‐organisational dynamics of the way knowledge is built up in daily life.

The paper explores changes in the notion of knowledge (and what is considered scientific method). Firstly, it identifies various genealogies in which previous limitations on the experiences to be included as knowledge have been extended. Secondly, the paper will look at experiences that link to the telling of stories, and explore the way they challenge as well as link to previous notions and extensions of knowledge in collaborative contexts.

A core characteristic of stories and their telling is an increase in people's awareness both of others as sources of intentional variation as well as of their cultural and human heritage.

The paper initiates a much‐needed discussion of the nature of knowledge as it relates to story telling. It links the experiences elicited by story telling to a genealogy of knowledge that identifies the difficulties of including experiences other than observations (e.g. uncertainty, intentionality). To study stories one needs to search for constraints on how individuals link to other individuals. The paper proposes how one might study stories by considering how they contribute to an extension of existing concepts of knowledge.

The paper seeks to support a better understanding of the types (or processes) of reflexivity which may be involved in the practice of organizational research, and the implications of reflexive practice for organizational researchers.

A characterization of reflexivity as a process is developed from extant research, in four steps. First, the principal dimensions of reflexivity – reflection and recursion – are identified and delineated. Second, recursion is shown to have two modes, active and passive. Third, reflection is shown to have both closed, self‐guided and open, relational modes. Fourth, through integrating the detailed characterizations of each of the dimensions, different types of reflexivity are identified and defined.

The paper shows how different types of reflexivity may be experienced sequentially, as a progressive process, by organizational researchers. Implications for research practice are derived from a consideration of this process.

The paper develops a novel conceptualization of reflexivity as a process with individual and relational aspects. This conceptualization supports important insights for the conduct and legitimation of reflexive research.

The paper aims to explore the problematics of validity that are inherent to the conduct of an action research project because of the disparate language games of both practitioners and academics.

An exploration is offered of the tensions between different understandings of a research setting at different stages of the research process.

In each phase of the research there are a number of tensions between different epistemological assumptions about the “reality” of the research setting. Validity is not, therefore, about capturing a singular objective picture of the organisation, but rather it is produced through the negotiation of a temporary intersection of language games.

The paper provides a framework for understanding the role of the researcher in the research process and the issues underlying validity claims made from different epistemological positions.

The paper provides insights in to the mechanisms through which practitioners and academics come to understand each other and the limitations of this knowledge.

The article raises awareness of the different normative assumptions at play within a variety of action research contexts.

If stories can create promising practices, what does talk of “collaboration” mean in the context of what would appear to be market‐based inter‐firm relationships (IFRs)? How do managers trying to cope in industrial sectors make sense of supply chain relationships? This empirically driven paper attempts to shed some light on these issues.

The stories collected here show how a subtle analysis of actors’ “network theories” revealed within the language of IFRs can facilitate the study of collaboration. Discourse analysis of interview material is used to illustrate how managers draw upon a series of interpretive repertoires in order to make sense of IFRs within three contrasting “supply chains” or “marketing channels”.

Managerial accounts, often in the form of “micro‐stories”, illustrate how these participants argue persuasively for a “landscape” of next possible actions. This is a landscape that, despite being moulded in part by ideas of network partnerships and “relationship marketing”, is more strongly shaped by notions of chains and marketplaces. The paper argues that the discursively constructed network theories of managers constrain their thoughts and actions as they attempt to manage relationships in supply chain contexts. Ultimately, participants appear to forego the opportunities promised by collaborative partnerships; instead their accounts suggest that they retain a world‐view dominated by a competitive market orientation.

Studies that reflect a better understanding of such stories of the marketplace may enable researchers to disseminate findings that help practitioners make more sense of the tensions inherent in inter‐firm collaborations.

Managers working within organizations that are part of public–private collaborations comment on their “diabolical” nature and seek guidance as to their administration. Set in an organization involved in a public–private “service delivery contract”, the purpose of this paper is to report research into the collaboration and challenges experienced within the organization. It also seeks to consider to the significance of narrative and story‐telling in understanding these complexities.

Data were collected using depth interviews and observation. The emerging discourse was analyzed using a machine‐based, lexigraphic tool to provide a framework for interpretive story analysis. The significance and value of each approach are illustrated as are the effective synergies between them.

The paper identifies a number of different competing interests, including the needs of the clients vs the governmentally imposed goals and performance metrics of the organization. The limitations of this network form are highlighted; through contrasting of manager and consultant stories it becomes plain that collaborative networking only occurs at the management levels.

The role of the story‐teller and the story context emerge as significant. Further research that pays greater attention to the stories’ context, subtext, roles of narrator and others in the story is recommended.

The paper demonstrates the value of extending machine‐based analysis with more interpretive approaches. The significance of story analysis in understanding the embeddedness of narrative is highlighted as the range of synergies that can arise from multiple analytical techniques.