Anchored in the story: The core of human understanding, branding, education, socialisation and the shaping of values

Abstract

Storytelling or the narrative approach is increasingly becoming a core element in influence processes such as education, teaching, leadership, culture, history, marketing and its facets and a whole range of other functionalities across the multitudes of human activities. By nature human processes are a story told for a purpose; be it, as fun, socialisation, education, business, and so forth. Storytelling, be it narrated consciously or otherwise, tends to have a huge impact on society. It is the contention of this paper that the story is the ultimate in shaping minds and behaviour, and creating perceptions for the clientele or the stakeholders in any human engagement. While some writers might question the authenticity of using the storytelling approach on the pretext that it is not scientific they cannot take away the influence that the story has in shaping the thought process. In any case the human heritage is a story that transcends through generations: evolution, creation, discoveries of places, scientific discoveries or inventions, obituaries, product profiles, organisational profiles, advertisements, etc. Anything that is current, past or future that is narrated encapsulates a story be it past, present or future and each has its own purpose. Marketing has taken on board this notion in most of its facets in communications and brand development though this element does not come out strongly in the marketing literature. A quick check on the marketing literature would not present the notion of storytelling or the narrative as a topic in marketing books other than in the form of case studies. Ultimately the paper emphasises the notion that every influence process involving people is down to a story and no one can deny that socialisation is a story of perpetuating humanity and its facets. Denning (2007a) suggests that there are eight types of stories that serve a range of business related purposes and other facets of life or man's desire to understand or explain the notion of the earth and its dynamics. Boje (2008) articulates how a story defines people, places, products, etc, pointing out that every entity is known by its story in a given context. In view Cont'd...-' *Correspondence details and a biography for the author are located at the end of the article.

Truth of dare: The principles of storytelling in Ophthalmology services - review

“…According to Znanewitz and Gilch, the following criteria are used to create effective storytelling [15] brand persona -used known celebrities or archetypes for quick and easy connection with the audience. Due to its usefulness, the storytelling approach is increasingly becoming a core element in the influential process in several fields such as education, teaching, leadership, culture, history, marketing and on a whole range of other functionalities across the multitude of human activities [16].…”

Always Ahead im Marketing

“…In dieser Definition kommen dabei auch zwei der zentralen theoretischen Grundlagen des Marketing zusammen, die heute leider immer noch viel zu oft als unabhängige Konstrukte verstanden werden: der market-based-view (Markttrends, Kundenerwartungen) auf der einen Seite und die resource-based theory of the firm (Ressourcen und Fähigkeiten des Unternehmens) auf der anderen Seite Im Sinne eines Storytelling (Kadembo, 2012) ist eine so geartete Positionierung ideal, um die zentralen Werte zu vermitteln und sie dann in die einzelnen Unternehmensbereiche zu übersetzen. Doch auch wenn die mythischen Positionierungsdimensionen einen einfachen Weg versprechen, lohnt es sich, den entscheidenden Schritt weg vom "postulierten" hin zu einem "echten" Kundenverständnis zu gehen.…”

Social media and community knowledge: An ideal partnership for non‐profit organizations

“…This is because a wide variety of narrative approaches are each suitable to a different business purpose or function: a success story or “springboard story”, for instance, may prove effective in moving people to action, but will be less effective at communicating tacit knowledge that would benefit the learning needs of an organization's members (Ibid. ; Kadembo 2012). Similarly “knowledge‐sharing” stories, which focus on the trial‐and‐error heuristics of professional practice, may prove less effective at moving people to action, but are essential for educating staff and stakeholders (Denning 2006; Whyte and Classen 2012).…”

“…In this way, the ‘story’ as a KM strategy represents a way in which organizational knowledge (typically the exclusive domain of KM) and domain‐specific ‘expert’ knowledge (e.g., such as environment, health, or other sector of specialized knowledge) can be appropriately collected and shared by an organization. While there may not be a single ‘right way’ to tell stories, the decision to employ narrative techniques to address organizational challenges is always good KM practice: “We are moved by stories more powerfully than we are moved by instructions” (Wilson 2008, as cited in Kadembo 2012, 228).…”

“…The narratives of how and/or why things work as they do within a particular context form a vital part of the KM strategy, overall. Exploring the dynamics of story as a tool for learning, motivation, branding and leadership that influence the thinking and values of societies, Kadembo (2012) postulates that storytelling propagates humanity through socialisation and “helps extend the boundaries of understanding” (222). Socialisation plays an essential role in approaches to knowledge sharing in organizations, facilitating the transfer of individual knowledge to group knowledge (Nonaka 1994).…”