Virtually Speaking: How Digital Storytelling Can Facilitate Organizational Learning

Abstract: Digital storytelling can be used as a tool in participatory action research. An organisation developed to enhance teaching and learning in high schools used this method as a way to collect narratives from the rural community it sewed. The staff and students who participated in digital storytelling became researchers focused on the personal narrative. Digital storytelling was used to give voice to community members and also to explain polity initiatives that directly affected the community. Digital storytelling was a way for the organisation to engage its members in a way that would benefit all stakeholders.Keywords: Digital stoytelling; organisational learning; partidpatoy action research; social engagement; multimedia technologies1. IntroductionMembers of an organization need to understand their organization. Each organization has a language, standard operating procedures, rites, rituals, and normative practices. These are formal and informal, canonical and non-canonical, explicit and implicit. Organizations spend a great deal of time searching and recruiting individuals with certain traits, experiences, and expertise. Then, organizations invest heavily in the development of the new members in the ways of the organisation. The purpose here is to assimilate and to retain its membership. While the conceptual and empirical research and pop cultural literature has elucidated the philosophical why and procedural how of integrating and inaugurating members into an organization, little has been said about the important roles of the individual in the evolution of the organization itself. In short, individual development and organizational efficiency and effectiveness are not mutually exclusive. Missing are tools that help strike the delicate balance between the socialization of members into the organizational code and the individual members' beliefs (March, 1999a).The purpose of this article is to report on a tool that is a vehicle for interactive or double-loop organizational learning (Argyris & Schon, 1996). We begin with an overview of the power of member voice as a necessary ingredient for organizational learning. Next, we explore how participatory action research can promote democratic inquiry and organizational effectiveness through member narrative. More specifically, we reveal Digital Storytelling as one such approach to promote organizational learning Finally, we offer an example of Digital Storytelling in use and the implications for organizational learning2. Organizational Learning, Why? How?Early organizational work sought the "one best way" to improve productivity (March & Simon, 1958; Taylor, 1911). The rational view characterized humans as inert objects and focused on the influence of such variables as cost, capacity, speed, and durability (March, 1978; March & Simon, 1958; Simon, 1957). A rational system is considered a self-correcting interdependent organization that has the ability to build consensus between goals and means and then coordinate the dissemination of information and predict problems (Weick, 1979). Flowever, March and Simon (1958) warned that such rationality oversimplified "models that capture the main features of a problem without capturing all its complexities" (p. 169). Consequently, the shift from the cult of efficiency (cf., Callahan, 1964) to member input and transparency has not been easy.Understanding and diagnosing organizations has proven difficult (see Flarrison, 2005). Organizational learning theory has emerged as a bridge that connects an organization's quest for efficiency and the individual members' need for place and sensemaking (see Argyris, 1992; Cohen & Sproull, 1996; March, 1999c; Weick, 1995). Flere the value of the individual is prized. In 1950 researcher George Flomans discovered that efficiency was not only a product of activity, but also of sentiment (satisfaction and motivation) and interaction (relationships and communication) (Flomans, 1950). …