Storytelling Diamond

The Storytelling Diamond Typology

To create the storytelling diamond model of interrelated storytelling in organization paradigms, we adapt the ontological, epistemological, and methodological dimensions suggested by Guba and Lincoln (1996) to be narrative-specific. We include the more indigenous story work in qualitative research (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008). We add to these a practice facet.

These are our starting questions:

How can the storytelling inquirer find out from interviews, texts, or gestures whatever can be known (methodology)?

Table 1 summarizes the researcher’s key benefits and limitations that inform choices among the antenarrativist process and organization storytelling paradigms: narrativist, living story, materialist, interpretivist, abstractionists, practice. Each is defined and explained in the following.

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Table 1.

Characteristics of Storytelling Paradigms.

Paradigms	Key Features	Researcher’s Role and Goal	Key Benefits	Limitations
Narrativist	Rooted in deeper structures of poetics, linguistics, structuralism, formalism and pragmatics. Seeks to unmask hidden structures that shape meaning making.	Outsider/observer who seeks objectivity in order to find empirical evidence to help in the testing of hypotheses. Tries to keep distant from emotional entanglements that may sully the research. Seeks generalizability.	Done within established social science paradigms. Identifies the elements of narratives so they are amenable to empirical testing. Emphasizes the stable and retrospective sensemaking aspects of narrative.	Tends to be ahistoric and monologic; tends to overlook the dynamic and prospective aspects from which the stable narrative has emerged; tends to overlook highly contextualized terse tellings and story fragments.
Living story	Includes living story, lived story, and life story approaches. Multiple perspectives and multiple voices are presumed to offer greater depth of understanding.	Insider/participant-observer who seeks connections with personal experience (sometimes via auto-ethnography) and lived experiences of others. Seeks differentiation, possibilities, and the “road not taken.”	Prefers story in situ, which more closely approaches lived experience. Focus on the interplay of deep historical analysis with (intertextual) webs of story-to-story in the present.	Tends to be biographical and can miss the wider historical trends, such as in historical materialism. Tends to be oral based and may be difficult to integrate with textual approaches.
Materialist	Historical accounts as elite narratives to be accepted or resisted.	May be insider or outsider seeking to either perpetuate or to question the historical status quo. Is focused on material conditions of superstructures, the brain, or the influence of physical things relative to story.	There are several types of materialist approaches; the internalized cognitive object, material conditions, and intra-activity of materiality with discourse (including storytelling).	There are incommensurate materialist positions, for example, the historical materialist focus on superstructures is not the same as “material storytelling,” which looks at intra-activity of discursive practices with material things.
Interpretivist	Often includes social constructivism, phenomenology, and hermeneutical interpretations.	May be insider or outsider seeking to know the world through structured and identifiable narratives.	Interpretivist looks at patterns of deeper subjective, deconstructing narrative representations, looking for underlying semiotic structures, formalist functions, and so on.	Tends to avoid the materialist conditions. Focus instead is on social structures or on cognitive structures. Tends to be exploratory.
Abstractionist	Analyzes narrativist or living story elements to aid empirical testing of existing theory by looking at linguistic or semiotic patterns.	Is usually an outsider who applies usually narrativist research in the service of theory building. Seeks the presumed underlying reality beneath the narratives.	Can be a subset of narrativist and materialist paradigms.	The essentialist and universalistic approaches are challenged by materialist and other paradigms for being schematic, separated from grounded experience, not ontologically Being-in-the-world.
Practice	Includes appreciative inquiry, restorying, and other story-based change programs, as well as more sociological praxis, such as historical (dialectic) materialism.	Seeks to identify dominant narratives and to change them in a practical, useful way. Believes change begins with changing the narrative. On the praxis side, the researcher problematizes dominant ideology threads of the storytelling.	Several models may serve different purposes, namely, management change and development for progress, control, efficiency; or Marxist, critical theory, and postructuralism deconstruct the monologic in change/development models.	Practice is not managerialist control nor resistance to that control by questioning ideological praxis. There is dialectic within practice itself. Change for managerial “progress” may be viewed as exploitive by praxis; change for resistance may be seen as subversive and political. One without the other is a limitation.
Antenarrativist Process	Focuses on in-between processes to better understand how lived experience is shaped, reified, and assimilated into narratives. Focuses as well on ways living stories turn into dominant narratives, struggle with counternarratives, and more micro living stories.	May be insider or outsider who seeks especially the marginalized or forgotten voices (microstoria) missing from the “grand narratives.” Seeks to question the “status quo.”	Seeks to trace processes of transformation in between organizational storytelling paradigm incommensurabilities (i.e., parallax gaps).	Identifies only the four types of antenarrative processes (linear, cyclic, spiral, and rhizomatic). Difficulty in conveying nonlinear aspects of spirals and rhizomes.

Applying the Storytelling Diamond Model

We turn now to a different set of storytelling paradigm questions that can lead to insight into how the researcher can uncover more philosophical science concerns with epistemology, ontology, and methodology.

What is the epistemological value of storytelling? Is it a series of unique and generalizable accounts of reality, or is it a phenomenon that explains identity and rationality?

We will pause to sum up our main assumptions and model applications. One of the fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of research paradigms is that research questions, and thus outcomes, can vary substantially based on paradigm choices. Application of the storytelling diamond model, then, has value from two perspectives. First, the model highlights for readers and reviewers of research the implicit and explicit assumptions that a researcher has made when using storytelling inquiry and when reporting a study’s findings. Second, the model situates the research question among the various paradigms with an eye toward capitalizing on the key benefits of research from that paradigm. Thus, the storytelling diamond adds to the methodological toolbox of storytelling scholars and allows scholars to better appreciate differing methods that may stem from equally rigorous and consistent, though ontologically and epistemologically different, assumptions.

Next, we examine how researchers can choose among organizational storytelling paradigms. In Table 2, we begin with a research context in the left column. If the situation is one that is faced by the researcher, then the noted paradigm should be considered. If at some point during the research someone using a narrativist perspective finds out that a process understanding of the phenomenon is required, redesigning the research around the living story paradigm is not only possible, but also potentially valuable.

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Table 2.

Researchers Choosing Among Organizational Paradigms.

Organization Storytelling Paradigms:	Epistemology	Ontology		Method
If participation will destroy the phenomenon, then use the deductive grounded theory of the narrativist paradigm.	Search for poetic, linguistic, formalistic, structuralist themes, schemata, underlying essentialist patterns	N/A		Fieldwork, etic grounded theory building, archival comparative cases to explore or extant theory; can be quantitative narrative studies
If a process understanding of the phenomenon is required, then use the living story paradigm.	N/A	Process focus on patterns of story relating intertextually to other stories		Ethnographic emic approach, may integrate other artifacts; some poststructuralist approaches
If using either a subjective internalized history or sociological historical focus, then use a materialist paradigm.	Cognitive materialism	Material storytelling and quantum storytelling	How materiality tells stories	Study relation of storytelling to material conditions and superstructures; neuroscience; critical posthumanism
If developing representations of an organization, then use interpretivist paradigm.	In representationalism, the part represents the whole	In historical materialism, it is a search for idealogical dialectics		Often positive hermeneutics, historical, or negative (critical) hermeneutics
If in need of abstract categories for use in future generalized research, then use the abstractionist paradigm.	Abstracting to the universalist or transcendent level of knowing	N/A		Can be quantitative data mining of semiotic patterns, or qualitative coding of types, forms
If endeavoring to change ideological practice, or change or develop processes of action, then use a practice paradigm.	Storytelling as in-place metering device of change/development or ideological praxis	Storytelling as part of restorying and ontological coaching		Many types of method: from survey checklists of storytelling, to ethnography, participative observation
If tracing the in-betweenness of narrativist and living story, how one affects or interacts with the other, then use antenarrativist process.	Works in between epistemology and ontology			Works in between quantitative and qualitative

Once the choices have been made, comparisons of epistemology should come first, using the antenarrative process to link any incommensurability between epistemologies. As a check against fundamentally illogical combinations, the ontological assumptions of these epistemological choices should be considered. Again, making compromises through the antenarrative process is highly recommended. Finally, a mixture of methods that best fit the research question should be used, with the potential of gaining a deeper qualitative understanding of any quantitative data that may have been mined from the stories. Greater detail on the exact nature of the antenarrative process can be found in the antenarrative handbook (Boje, 2011).

Table 2 summarizes, in the first column, some of the main considerations in choosing among storytelling paradigms. Then the last three columns look at issues of epistemology, ontology, and method. The intention is to show some places where the epistemology and ontology overlap or predominantly are separated and places where particular methods are chosen more often. In the next section we look at some work that is crossing paradigms in unique ways.

Situating the Research—Guidelines for the Reviewer

Based on this in-depth approach to understanding storytelling research, a natural question emerges: On what basis will submissions employing storytelling research be adjudicated in the review process? ¹ Do reviewers apply to storytelling research the same criteria as applied to other qualitative research? As Easterby-Smith et al. (2008) point out, reviewers and editors must be “informed as to how articles ought to be shaped and judged relative to the traditions from which they emanate” (p. 423). Our storytelling diamond provides that guidance to reviewers so that they can review storytelling research outside of the traditions within which the reviewers might operate, applying criteria consistent with the ontological, epistemological, and methodological traditions of storytelling research.

The criteria used to judge storytelling research are akin to the criteria used to judge ethnography, as provided by Denzin (1997), who distinguishes analytic and storied approaches. Similarly, we distinguish etic and emic approaches to storytelling. An etic approach is abstractionist and based on congruence with existing theory as well as ability to add to the theoretical base. Etic research is incremental and values repeatability; it intends to grow a twig on a branch of a much larger tree. Emic research is oriented to praxis and based on congruence with lived experience and the ability to engage the imagination. Emic research wants a new tree; it values novelty over repeatability. Although the etic researcher is a neutral observer, the emic researcher is an involved participant. In terms of storytelling research, the etic researcher is a narrativist, and the emic researcher is an antenarrativist.

Table 3 gives some guidelines for assessing rigor in the various storytelling paradigms. Pratt (2008) points to a lack of “boilerplate” for evaluating qualitative research: namely, a lack of “standard operating procedures for evaluating qualitative work” (p. 489). Pratt suggests the creation of “checklists” that “point out what elements need to be part of a Method section” (p. 502). According to Pratt, the elements can be “viewed as a series of four nested questions” (p. 502): (1) “Why this study?” (2) “Why study here?” (3) “What am I studying and why?” and (4) “How did I study these things?” Ultimately, as we have demonstrated throughout this paper, criteria for evaluation is dependent upon the paradigm chosen. Narrativist, living story, interpretivist, materialist, abstractionist, and practice organization paradigms have their own socialized community of practice, and therefore their own criteria for rigor. It is inappropriate to use one paradigm's criteria for rigor to denigrate another paradigm, unless the focus is to be cross-paradigm. Rather, we recommend translating the rigor criteria into the rigor criteria of the opposed paradigm. For example, in ethnostatistics, the work is about how to use interpretivist rigor criteria (the qualitative) to look at the steps empiricists used to construct numbers, use statistical packages in ways that violate the mathematical assumptions, and use rhetoric to interpret the next-steps of research or the way number tables are to be read and understood. Thus, although a storytelling boilerplate or template may not be possible, researchers should address these four questions, and reviewers should be able to identify the answers to these questions in storytelling research. Our checklist, which follows Pratt’s outline for choosing among the organizational storytelling paradigms, is found in Table 3.

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Table 3.

Checklists for Reviewers.

Why this study?

Will participation destroy the phenomenon in question? (If yes, narrativist)

Is a process understanding needed required to get at the phenomenon (If yes, living story)

Does the research question require an internalized history or social-historical focus? (If yes, materialist)

Does the research question require the development of organizational representations? (If yes, interpretivist)

Does the researcher’s motivation require that abstract categories be for future research? (If yes, abstractionist)

Will the researcher be endeavoring to change ideological practice, or change or develop processes of action? (If yes, practice)

Is the research tracing processes between monologic narratives and more polyphonic manner of lived stories? (If yes, antenarrativist)

Is the research a critique of an existing dominant or grand narrative by addressing antecedent processes “before” narrative, or “bet” of how narrative will unravel in the future? (If yes, antenarrativist)

How is storytelling being sampled?

An abstractionist study will use a more representative, random sample. A narrative study may use a Burkean representationalist anecdote. Other narrative studies aim for thematic sampling of a theory, such as in grounded theory. The living stories paradigm uses more emic, ethnographic studies, a lived experience of the field. Historical materialist studies focus on sampling ideological themes from texts representative of a discourse community, in this case an organization, its environment. The antenarrative traces processes across what Zizek (2006) calls parallax gaps, which we define as quantitative-qualitative gaps, epistemic-empiric-ontologic gaps, and gaps between narrative-antenarrative-living story.

What criteria for rigor can be used?

Is the criteria used by the reviewer appropriate based on the author’s chosen paradigm?

If using cross-paradigm criteria, is the reviewer aware of and explicit in its choice?

Is the author motivated by creating change for disenfranchised voices? If so, materialism, living story, and practice are each important to consider using.

Is the author motivated by creating change in the conversation surrounding a construct of interest? If so, abstractionist, interpretivist and either narrativist or living story are each important to consider.

Is the author interested in both changing the situation of disenfranchised voices and creating knowledge that can be used by the postpositivist community? If so, antenarrative processes should be used as the links between otherwise incommensurate paradigms such as simultaneous use of materialist and abstractionist.

Why study here?

Is the sample of stories or narratives representative of the population, and thus, are findings generalizable? (If yes, narrativist, abstractionist, or postpositivist practice)

Does the author seek empirical proof in order to provide definite answers? ( If yes, narrativist or living story, abstractionist, and postpositivist practice )

Does the research site expand the definitions of evidence by including marginalized voices? (If yes, living story that involves interpretivist or materialist perspectives and is practice focused)

Does the author stress goals and values? ( If yes, living story that involves interpretivist or materialist perspectives and is practice focused)

What is the author studying and why?

How does the author draw sample? Does evidence come from single, historical point? (If yes, materialist)

Has the author collected open-ended stories from multiple story points? (If yes, interpretivist)

How did the author study these things?

Has the author analyzed evidence for an historical account? (If yes, materialist)

Does the author analyze themes from multiple story or narrative points? (If yes, interpretivist)

Does the author “show” the stories or deep structures or motifs underlying narratives? That is, did the author provide thick description? (If yes, interpretivist)

Note: Adapted from Pratt (2008).

Situating the Research—Guidelines for the Researcher

Just as with other forms of qualitative research, storytelling research draws from and is shaped by different theoretical paradigms. Successful execution of this research requires a systematic, detailed, and nuanced approach that results in well-supported research claims. The storytelling model helps a researcher create robust, rigorous storytelling research through a multi-element iterative process that matches ontological and epistemological assumptions with appropriate methods. Table 2 summarizes the characteristics of the six paradigms that constitute the storytelling diamond model.

From a researcher’s perspective, the first major step in situating storytelling research is identifying ontological assumptions—the underlying belief structure of the researcher regarding the nature of being and the essential properties of the human experience. In storytelling research, the question is one of the nature of story and whether it is seen as a reflection of reality (materialist) or as constituting reality (interpretivist). This dimension is in many ways static because while a researcher’s ontological perspective may evolve over time, it is what it is. Thus, this step is one of acknowledgment of the existing ontology, not one of creating or choosing an ontology.

The second step in situating the research regards its goal: Does the researcher intend to uncover existing reality through story (abstractionist) or change the dominant reality (praxis)? Abstractionists prefer predefined categories of stories, such as morality tales or personal success stories, while praxis-oriented researchers prefer to collect stories in situ, which more closely resembles lived experience. This is especially critical when, for instance, the researcher is attempting to compare high- and low-context cultures.

Finally, there is a decision point regarding methodology and how the researcher intends to use data that are collected from stories. The first category is the more traditional narrativist approach to storytelling wherein data are collected, organized, and interpreted based on established theory and proven categorization. This is a “researcher as observer” perspective on data collection. The second possibility is an antenarrative approach that collects stories as they are being played out in lived experience without regard for whether these stories are yet complete.

While the eight paths depicted in the storytelling model are theoretically possible, some combinations are more “natural” fits than others because characteristics of each paradigm can pose theoretical dilemmas. For instance, since narrativist researchers typically prefer etic methods, existing narratives are the empirical evidence used to test hypotheses. Sensemaking is retrospective as individuals reflect on these existing narratives. Thus, narrativist researchers are typically abstractionist oriented. Narrativists also tend to be interpretivists, in part because they assume that the world is knowable through structured and identifiable narratives that are interpreted within existing theoretical frameworks. These narratives form the basis for social and historical processes of meaning making.

A significant drawback to narrativist research concerns the lack of consistent definitions for phenomenon studied across contexts. For instance, personal success may be defined very differently in individualist versus collectivist cultures, leading to misinterpretations of stories. Narrativist approaches, if used at all in emic research, must be used with great care taken to validate the externally imposed categories within the specific cultural context.

This approach may use deconstruction or other analytic methods to reveal the way lived experience becomes “living story” and then may be transformed into narrative. The antenarrativist perspective allows for the study of the same phenomenon across different contexts, especially when the phenomenon is experienced very differently. For example, indigenous storytelling and Euro-Western storytelling can be studied simultaneously, even though the two are very different. Similarly, high-context cultures and “strong” cultures that may have more terse and cryptic narratives than other cultures can also be studied successfully with the different archetypal “antenarrative” formats such as linear, cyclical, spiral, or rhizomatic assemblage patterns.

A major challenge with antenarrative research is the difficulty in generalizing findings to other contexts. Another danger exists if the dominant narratives are not deconstructed because their material conditions may be overlooked. Such an oversight might constrain possibilities for change in those same material conditions.

Conclusion

As we began this study, the one question that arose repeatedly was: How can scholars benefit from clarity in storytelling paradigms or from just knowing that distinctive paradigms exist? We have concluded that benefits accrue in two ways. The first is in richer research designs, and the second is in wider acceptance of storytelling paradigms as vigorous, creative, defensible scholarship.

The richness of a research design can be enhanced in two ways. First, the storytelling diamond model can be used to decide what methodology is most appropriate for the research goals. Second, the model can be used to help extend existing research by providing additional perspectives to study the use of story and storytelling inquiry in organization studies.

One of the advantages of storytelling inquiry is that it is useful at both the theoretical and applied levels. For instance, assume that a researcher is interested in understanding why different actors are telling very different stories about an organizational event. From a theoretical perspective, storytelling inquiry can be used to add context to the stories, thereby giving them meaning and helping to interpret those stories. Stories can be collected, analyzed, and categorized to provide a clearer picture of the differences underlying the varying versions of the event.

At the applied level, again assume that a researcher is searching for managerial tools that work in a given organization situation. Storytelling inquiry can help identify the conditions and processes that are most effective. In fact, this approach to storytelling inquiry allows for a multitude of research designs. Scholars may conduct field studies, collecting data via observation or interview. Alternatively, the researcher may create an experimental design, thereby testing the viability of a range of tools in multiple situations. By using the storytelling diamond model, the researcher has the flexibility to create a unique research design while maintaining precise and rigorous standards that are necessary in organization science.

Extending existing studies is another benefit of using the storytelling diamond model. Typically, scholars adopt a consistent perspective when choosing research designs. Choices are made regarding ontology, epistemology, and methodology. One wonders what would happen, for instance, if scholars who had previously adopted a particular perspective chose to extend their scholarship by seeing what else could be learned with a different lens. We are not suggesting that the scholar should have used a different lens, only that the knowledge gained could be extended with multiple perspectives. For instance, because of the nature of an interpretivist lens, the scholar assumes that narrative is socially constructed and gives equal weight to stories from any and all subjects. Thus, the findings are predicated on the assumption that all stories are created equally. But what happens if the scholars choose to extend their research by adopting a materialist lens and ask the question, Are some of these stories privileged over others? Are some of the stories actually elite narratives that have greater influence in the construction of the objective reality? How do their results change when some narratives are privileged over others? Again, it is not our intention to claim that the scholars should have used a different lens, only that the richness of their study can potentially be enhanced through multiple lenses.

We do suggest that the richness of organization science overall can be enhanced with the rigorous use of storytelling inquiry. The application of the storytelling diamond model provides an interesting window into our acceptance and use of story and storytelling inquiry as a viable approach to organizational research. The model helps us assess the objective reality of storytelling as a qualitative methodology and asks the question, Does a storytelling methodology adhere to sufficient rigor to meet scientific standards? We suggest that it can, as long as the assumptions inherent in the research are clearly articulated and understood by both the scholars who create the research and those who use it to further our understanding of organizations and human interaction. We hope that the storytelling diamond model can help explain why there is value in research methods that reject generalizable conceptualizations in favor of deep description, thereby giving voice to previously disenfranchised methodologies.

We note that practice is not a unitary concept. Practices, in organizational development and change, are not the same practices as praxis in sociology or Marxist ideological critique. Nor are they the practices familiar to positivist or postpositivistic methods, such as survey research feedback done to change practices. Instead, practice is the fundamental outcome desired by the research design. Despite the interested-party nature of practice, postpositivism often hides its move toward practical change in the organization being studied under a thin veneer of pragmatism.

Finally, researchers who are looking at ways of extending organizational inquiry through more expansive narrative might be interested in quantum storytelling and the role that living story plays in it. “Living story” has the potential to open a new door into interpreting narrative not as a coherent, linear account of events but as a living entity itself.

In creating the storytelling diamond we suggest that researchers have more options than previously believed when using story and storytelling in their studies. Furthermore, we help clarify research design so that both implicit and explicit assumptions about narrative are more clearly defined and understood within storytelling inquiry. Our goal has been to offer a guide to the expanding field of storytelling inquiry while increasing rigor and quality in storytelling research designs.