ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book offers critical reflections and thoughtful guidance on the practices and pitfalls of storytelling at work. It traces the increasing academic and practitioner interest in storytelling, and attempts to provoke reflection on the often unacknowledged problems associated with the special form of persuasive talk that is organizational storytelling. Noting the extent to which managerial accounts of storytelling build and depend upon sensegiving narratives, the book suggests that the impulse to direct others through stories is, at root, a reaction to the inherent limits of managerial control. The book also offers an account of the nature of management which analyses the nature of managerial control and its inherent limitations. Through our reflections on sensemaking it attempts to deflate the egos of those who assume that organizational storytelling represents a panacea.
