Building Process Theory with Narrative: from Description to Explanation

Abstract

Narrative is especially relevant to the analysis of organizational processes because people do not simply tell stories—they enact them. Narrative data have surface features that are useful for description, but explanatory process theories must be based on deeper structures that are not directly observable. To address this problem and to facilitate better process theory, in this article I use concepts from narrative theory to create a framework for analyzing structural features in narrative data.