EMERGING THEMES IN THE LIFE STORIES OF

Date
2011-06-09
Authors
Reyneke, Cindi
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Abstract
This report focuses on emerging themes in effective managers’ life stories. The literature review looks at the role of stories in a broader sense in organisations and more specifically the life stories or autobiographical stories and their impact on learning, management, leadership and self development. Regarding methodology, utilising phenomenography, the research aims to uncover conceptions and conclusions that can be drawn from managers’ life stories and how they could have a bearing on their success. The result of this phenomenographic study is a structure of categories of description which is interpreted with respect to existing theory on stories and autobiographical writing. This research has implications in the fields of self-development when grounded in the managers’ experience of a multifaceted context, reflection, reconceptualisation and action become means with which to solve problems, clarify ambiguities and develop personal skills and abilities. For persons in management these skills are essential and academic training is not particularly useful in developing a manager’s ability to deal with problems. This research also has a bearing on career management, recruitment and selection as well as training and development in that stories act as enablers to describing and reflecting an organisational climate. This allows individuals to make personal decisions about the appropriateness of their “fit” with the organisation and provides a common framework to discuss inconsistency and incompetence
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Story telling, Managers, Life stories
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