The idea is to analyze metaphors and icons that story and center collective dynamics. Several consultants use mythmaking and storytelling as a tool for changing large systems and organizations.  Most widely know is Harrison Owens.

Introduction

Meyer and Rowan (1977) were among the first to argue that interorganizational relations (and networks) transfer institutional myths and rituals between complex organizations through imitation.  See "Institutional organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony." American Journal of Sociology. 83: 929-984. 

Mythmaking. Mythmaking has important implications for TD networking. Rather than looking at myth as a fiction, I prefer to define myth as a very special, sometimes even sacred kind of story that interprets the world around us.  While all stories interpret something, and offer an ideology, myths do something more than most stories. Myths provide deeply felt and believed schema, such as the mechanistic view that the organization is a machine, or the organic view that the organization is evolving to some more progressive and ideal state. A myth explains the origin of life, illustrates moral values, links cause and effect (e.g. cog in this here machine), and explains grand powers over human beings and social organizations (Boje & Rowland, 1977).   While science seeks to discredit, or demythify all mythology, we still seem to live our life by our myths, and their metaphoric logics.  We each have a life narrative of our life, our family, our work, our community, and our world.  Together, these stories constitute our personal myth.  Our myth gives meaning to our life, constructs our own and others? identity, our taken-for-granted assumptions, and becomes a framework for everything we think and do.  As Carl Jung asked long ago: "What myth are we living ?"

Harrison Owens

1. Mythic Transformation an interview with Harrison Owen, by Leslie Ehle - Owen is one of the initial instigators of the Organizational Transformation movement. He likes the Peters Search for Excellence focus on stories and transformation. Mythology becomes the mechanism through which we can map, track, or image [organizational] journey (press here). For A detailed background of Open Space Conference approach by Doug Reeler (press here). Short consultant's story by Anne Stadler (press here) and a one page history (press here). Opening Space for Emerging Order by Harrison Owen (press here). To register for an Open Space Conference (press here).

Boje, Fedor & Rowland

Mythmaking in organizations is, not untruth, as much as it is the way in which “elements of organizational culture are conceptually organized into a system of organizationally relevant logic” (Boje, Fedor & Rowland, 1982: 17). We seem to be disowning myths of mechanistic, organic or other logic, in favor of chaos the chaos myth, using the new physics language of fractals, cusps, non-linearity, and other chaos-terms to fashion our post-Newtonian stories.  Mythologic is defined, here, as a narrative, meta-logic, as opposed to a Cartesian, logical empirical, or even post-Newtonian ways of knowing the social world.  There is scientific, but also narrative knowing.   This does not mean that science is beyond narrative logos.  As Lyotard (1984) points out, science is a metanarrative tied to the myth of progress and enlightenment.

Mythmaking is the Big Story,  a form of metanarrative, a grand universalizing claim, that differs from local stories, or what Lyotard (1984) calls “local narratives.” Mythmaking systems in organizations, as a metanarrative way of knowing, constrains the choices of meanings by constituting a common sense, taken-for-granted, objectified experience.   Local accounts can supplement or contest dominant myths (Cummings & Brvcklesby, 1997; Boyce, 1995; Boje & Lasko, 1980; Boje, 1981a; 1981b).   “Myths (and stories) collide and compete in the ongoing negotiation of power and privilege among groups, attempting to determine the dominant myth-making system” (p. 18, additions, ours).  According to Boje, Fedor & Rowland (1982: 18-20):

1. Myths create, maintain, and legitimate past, present, or future actions and consequences.
2. Myths maintain and conceal political interests and value systems
3. Myths help explain and create cause and effect relationships.
4. Myths rationalize the complexity and turbulence of activities and events to allow predictable action taking.

TD practice can take one of at least four positions with reference to mythmaking Muayyad (1997) and Kaye (1996) has also looked at myth and the type of change strategy to deploy.  Boje, Fedor, and Rowland’s (1982) scheme:

1. Demythifying, by substituting the cannons of behavioral science for mythological constructions.
2. Myth exchange, by allowing systems actors to bracket their own ways of knowing, in order to see the world as others are seeing it, and being able to translate one into the other.
3. Myth balancing, by dialoging many alternative views that oppose dominant perspectives.
4. Myth enrichment, by helping people reconstruct their experiences in ways that promote a higher quality of working life.

Boje, D.M., Fedor, D.B., and Rowland, K.M. "Myth Making: A Qualitative Step in OD Interventions," Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 18, 1, pp. 17-28, 1982.

1. Myth, Symbols and Folklore: Expanding the Analysis of Organizations, Conference with 40 presenters and 200 attendees, Santa Monica, California, March 10,12, 1983. Conference hosted by Mike Jones , Bruce Giuliano, and Boje.
2. ICEND Model - Boje & Jones -Table 11: ICEND - Interactive, Communicative, Experiential, and Network Development (press here).

Will McWhinney

In the first case, demythifying denies the validity of non-science based world views.  In the second and third, TD can help people to stretch their world view.  It is in the forth case, that we are concerned in this paper.  That is, ways in which remythologizing, to use Will McWhinney’s term (McWhinney & Battista, 1988), allows the organization participants to do reconstruct their mythic logic.  Boyce (1995) has also examined this approach.  It is our purpose here, to build upon the notion that their is a storytelling system, call it a mythmaking system, which constitutes metanarrative logics for organizational participants.  As the organization encounters new environments, the mythologic changes.  The reverse is also true.  As the mythmaking changes, and new stories get constructed, new environments become sensible.

• The power elite engages in mythmaking, producing oversimplified logics and stories that keep them in power. Chomsky calls this the "manufacture of consent." Elites create the illusions of participation, while keeping the majority of people out of meaningful participation and governance.
• 80-20 Rule - Chomsky argues that 80% of the populace is side-tracked into fundamentalist, silly, and time-wasting propaganda, so that 20%, the relatively well-educated elite can manage, write, and vote.
• The Manufacture of Consent - The media filtered and selected fragmented topics, emphasizing certain issues and marginalizing others, and bounding national debate within certain limits.

Boje, David and Kendrith M. Rowland
1977 "Spatial and Temporal Patterns as Sense-Making Devices in Organizational Development:  The Role of Symbols, Metaphors, and Myths," (with Kendrith M. Rowland), Academy of Management Conference, Orlando, Florida, August.

Boje, David and Joan Lasko
1980 "An Historical Analysis of the GSM Learning Community Myth" Organization Behavior Teaching Conference, University of Southern California, California, June.

Boje, David
1981a "Intervening Through Organization Myth Making," California Folklore Society Meeting, UCLA, April 2-5.

1981b "Myth Making:  A Qualitative Step in OD Interventions," OD Division Session of the Academy of Management Meetings, Las Vegas, Nevada, August.

Boje, David, Donald B. Fedor, and Kendrith M. Rowland
1982 "Myth making: A qualitative step in OD interventions".  Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 18: 17-28.

Boyce, Mary
1995 "Collective centering and collective sense-making in the stories and storytelling of one organization."  Organization Studies.  16 (1). 107-137.

Cummings, Stephen & John Brvcklesby
1997 "Towards demokratia - myth and the management of organizational change in ancient Athens." Journal of Organizational Change Management.  10(1): 71-95.

Epston, David
1989 Collected Papers. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Jabri, Muayyad
1997 "Pairing myth with type of change: implications for change communication." Journal of Organizational Change Management. 10(1): 21-29.

Jones, M. O., D. M. Boje & B. Giuliano.
1983 "Myth, Symbols and Folklore:  Expanding the Analysis of Organizations," Conference with 40 presenters and 200 attendees, Santa Monica, California, March 10,12, 1983. Sponsored by grants from National Endowment for the Humanities and the Skaggs Foundation.

McWhinney, W., and J. Battista
1988 "How remythologizing can revitalize organizations. "    Organizational Dynamics  Vol. 17 (August) 46-58.

Thompson, Michael G.
1996 "Can narrative therapy heal the school?"  unpublished paper.

White, M.
1989 Selected Papers. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.

1991 "Deconstruction and therapy."  Dulwich Centre Newsletter.  1, 21-40.

White, Michael, & David Epston
1990 Narrative means to therapeutic ends.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company,

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