Cover not available
Article published In:
Narratives as Social Practice in Organisational Contexts
Edited by Dorien Van De Mieroop, Jonathan Clifton and Stephanie Schnurr
[Narrative Inquiry 32:1] 2022
► pp. 130–147

‘I have her image of bringing me cherries as an offer’

Exploring belonging and trust in cross-border business collaboration through storytelling

| University of the West of England
| University of Warwick

This paper explores the role of narratives as resources for enacting group membership and community building in the case of one company, a Greek-Turkish partnership, SforSteel. We pay special attention to the function of iterative stories and specifically one that indexes the origin of the partnership. The analysis shows that the story, and its episodes, act as significant interactional resources for partners to claim a shared regional identity, that of people coming from the area of Trabzon in the Black Sea region. By negotiating a common origin, the partners simultaneously strengthen their long-term relationship and continuously reconnect the past to the present. The strong long-term relationship has a symbolic status and constitutes a condition for being accepted in this community. Through the analysis of this story our discussion addresses the importance of iterativity and the foundational relationship between community and trust.

Keywords: narratives as resources, iterativity, trustworthiness, trust, historicity, shared group membership, interactional histories
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Iterativity in storytelling practices
    • Trust and trustworthiness
  • Data and methods
  • Analysis and discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 4 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20049.eft
References
Angouri, J.
(2012) “I’m a Greek Kiwi”: Constructing Greekness in Discourse. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 11(2), 96–108, DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Culture, discourse, and the workplace, Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, C. & Widdicombe, S.
(1998) Identities in Talk. London: SageGoogle Scholar
Bamberg, M., De Fina, A. & Schiffrin, D.
(2011) Discourse and Identity Construction. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx and V. Vignoles (eds.), The Handbook of Identity Theory and Research (pp. 177–199). Berlin/New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brewer, M. B.
(1996) In-group favoritism: the subtle side of intergroup discrimination. In D. M. Messick and A. Tenbrunsel (eds.), Codes of Conduct: Behavioral Research and Business Ethics, (pp. 160–71). New York: Russell Sage FoundGoogle Scholar
(1981) Ethnocentrism and its role in interpersonal trust. In D. T. Campbell, M. B. Brewer and B. E. Collins (eds.), Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences (pp. 354–60). New York: Jossey-BassGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K.
(2005) Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) ‘Finding identity: Theory and data’, Multilingua, 271, 151–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Candlin, C. N. & Crichton, J.
(eds.) (2013) Discourses of Trust. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A.
(2008) Who Tells which Story and Why? Micro and Macro Contexts in Narrative. Micro and Macros Contexts in Narrative. Text & Talk, 28 (3): 421–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) Positioning level 3 Connecting local identity displays to macro social processes. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1), 40–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Narrative and Identities. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, (pp. 351–368). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A. & Georgakopoulou, A.
(2008) Editorial. Analysing narratives as practices. Qualitative Research, 8(3), 379–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Declercq, J. and Jacobs, G.
(2018) “It’s such a great story it sells itself”? Narratives of vicarious experience in a European pharmaceutical company, Journal of Pragmatics, 1521, 89–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Efthymiadou, C.
(2018) ‘It’s all about trust after all’: doing trust in cross-border collaboration. PhD thesis, University of Warwick, CoventryGoogle Scholar
Efthymiadou, C. and Angouri, J.
(2021, in preparation) ‘And I believed like a fool, what can I do?: Claiming trustworthiness in business partnerships’, paper to be submitted to the Journal of PragmaticsGoogle Scholar
Gambetta, D.
(1988) Trust: Making and breaking cooperative relations. New York: Basil BlackwellGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A.
(2013) Narrative analysis of and for CMC. Insights from a social-interactional approach. In S. Herring, D. Stein and T. Virtanen (eds.), Handbook of the Pragmatics of CMC (pp. 687–707). Berlin: Mouton de GruyterGoogle Scholar
(2008) On MSN with buff boys: Self-and other-identity claims in the context of small stories. Journal of sociolinguistics, 12(5), 597–626. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Thinking Big with Small Stories in Narrative and Identity Analysis. Narrative Inquiry 161, 122–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J.
(1982) Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hirschon, R.
(2003) The Consequences of the Lausanne Convention: An Overview. In R. Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. Studies in Forced Migration (Vol 11., pp. 13–20). New York: Berghahn Books. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J. & Stubbe, M.
(2003) Power and Politeness in the Workplace: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: PearsonGoogle Scholar
Kramer, R. M.
(1999) Trust and Distrust in Organisations: Emerging Perspectives, Enduring Questions. Annual Review of Psychology 501, 569–598. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kramer, R. M. & Lewicki, R. J.
(2010) Repairing and enhancing trust: Approaches to reducing organizational trust deficits. The Academy of Management Annals, 4(1), 245–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lave, J. and Wenger, E.
(1991) Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Page & Tabouret-Keller A.
(1985) Acts of identity: Creole based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Loh, J., Smith, J. R. & Restubog S. L. D.
(2010) The role of culture, workgroup membership, and organizational status on cooperation and trust: An experimental investigation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(2), 2947–2968. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luhmann, N.
(1988) Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives. In D. Gambetta (ed.), Trust: Making and breaking cooperative relations (pp. 94–107). New York: Basil BlackwellGoogle Scholar
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H. & Schoorman F. D.
(1995) An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N. R.
(1998) Retelling stories in spontaneous conversation, Discourse Processes, 25(1), 75–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pelsmaekers, K. Jacobs, G. & Rollo, C.
(eds.) (2014) Trust and discursive interaction in organizational settings. In K. Pelsmaekers, G. Jacobs and C. Rollo (eds.), Trust and Discourse: Organizational perspective (pp.1–10). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing CompanyGoogle Scholar
Pesämaa, O. & Hair, J. F.
(2007) ‘More than friendship is required: an empirical test of cooperative firm strategies’, Management Decision, 45(3), 602–615. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosanas, J. M. & Velilla, M.
(2003) Loyalty and trust as the ethical bases of organizations, Journal of Business Ethics, 44(1), 49–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., Camerer, C.
(1998) Not so different after all: a crossdiscipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23 (3), 393–404. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, M.
(2012) ‘Disagreements, face and politeness’, Journal of Pragmatics, 44(12), 1554–1564. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stapleton, K. and Wilson, J.
(2017) Telling the story: Meaning making in a community narrative. Journal of Pragmatics, 1081, 60–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H.
(1972) La catégorisation sociale. In S. Moscovici (ed.), Introduction à la psychologie sociale (Vol. 11, pp. 272–302). Paris: LarousseGoogle Scholar
Tsagarousianou, R.
(2004) Rethinking the concept of diaspora: Mobility, connectivity and communication in a globalized world. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 11: 52–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van De Mieroop, D.
(2018) Implying identities through narratives of vicarious experience in job interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 1521, 61–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wenger, E.
(1998) CofP: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Yıldırım, O.
(2006) The 1923 Population Exchange, Refugees and National Historiographies in Greece and Turkey. East European Quarterly XL1, 45–70Google Scholar
Zaheer, A. McEvily, B. & Perrone, V.
(1998) Does Trust Matter? Exploring the Effects of Interorganizational and Interpersonal Trust on Performance. Organization Science, 9(2), 141–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zografou, M. & Pipyrou, S.
(2011) Dance and Difference: Toward an Individualization of the Pontian Self. Dance Chronicle, 34(3), 422–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar