The topic of fiction is in itself not new to the domain of organization studies. However, prior research has often separated fiction from the reality of organizations and used fiction metaphorically or as a figurative source to describe and interpret organizations. In this article, we go beyond the classic use of fiction, and suggest that fiction should be a central concern in organization studies. We draw on the philosophy of fiction to offer an alternative account of the nature of fiction and its basic operation. We specifically import Searle's work on speech acts, Walton's pretense theory, Iser's fictionalizing acts, and Ricoeur's work on narrative fiction to theorize about organizations as fictions. In doing so, we hope that we not only offer an account of the "ontological status" of organizations but also provide a set of theoretical coordinates and lenses through which, separately or together, the notion of organizations as fictions can be approached and understood.

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Paul Ricoeur’s work on phenomenology proposes a self in the world, in a world that is acted upon by, and acting upon, the self. This chapter outlines some of the major movements Ricoeur made during his long and prolific academic career. His method was to create dialogue between two juxtaposed positions and explore how, together, they offer more than their separate parts. The particular and the general, as well as the abstract and the concrete, became the planes upon which Ricoeur positions the self in relation to the other, through language and narrative, in time. This chapter’s aim is to articulate Ricoeur’s way of understanding experience in the light of his varied approaches to the self.

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