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. 148–172

The moral work of becoming a professional

The interactional practices of storytelling in professional peer mentoring groups

| University of Jyväskylä
| Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT

In contemporary working life, art-based initiatives are increasingly used in organizational training and development. For artists, this has created new employment opportunities as creative entrepreneurs who provide specialist services for workplaces. In this article, we study the dynamics of such encounters through the narrated accounts of training professionals. Our data come from a professional mentoring program where the working pairs of artists and consultants shared stories about their customer projects. By using conversation analysis as a method, we analyze the way stories are interactionally accomplished in peer group sessions of the program. In particular, we analyze how participants produce different versions of the narrated events, and by so doing, negotiate the questions of blame and accountability with regard to professional action. In conclusion, we discuss stories and storytelling as organizational practice through which the moral order and legitimacy of the program is sustained and the boundaries of the profession constructed.

Keywords: artist-developer, professional boundary-work, peer group interaction, reflection, morality, situated storytelling
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Data and method
  • Analysis of storytelling as a means for professional boundary work
    • Eliciting professional reflection and development
    • Giving reasons for unexpected experience
    • Shifting the blame and normalizing the problem
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 June 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20056.nis
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