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The Quest for Organizational Meaning

Identifying and Interpreting the Symbolism in Organizational Stories

George Mason University

The interest in organizational culture has led to collecting and cataloging the themes in stories from many organizations. Here stories and other accounts of organizational life are interpreted on the basis of the resemblance of symbolic elements in the stories to a classic myth archetype. Taking this interpretative approach further suggest that some widely told stories can themselves be considered as myths. It is argued that even though stories can use symbolic elements from many sources, the archetypal myth themes are widely known conventions and are a plausible and rich source of highly expressive symbolism.

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