Journal of Organizational Change Management

Purpose – Stories draw meaning from narratives. The resulting narrative component in a story is entirely personal or contains fragments of organizational and/or societal narratives. Therefore, understanding how stories obtain these narrative fragments is critical to offering valid interpretations of narratives based on stories. In an effort to advance narrative research, the purpose of this paper is to address this fundamental question: How do stories obtain their reflected narrative fragments? Without a firm understanding of how stories draw meaning from narratives, the critical role of disentangling compound narratives from stories – interpretation – remains suspect.

Design/methodology/approach – The findings are drawn from extant research and prior conceptualizations, and the story formulation model is introduced.

Findings – Through the introduction of the story formulation model, it is shown that personal narratives are omnipresent within collective narratives. Additionally, the analysis indicates there are two stages in which narrative interaction occurs, during the formulation of stories and during the formulation of narratives.

Originality/value – The findings have significant impact on the interpretation of stories, as well as furthering the understanding of how stories draw their meaning from narratives. In particular, the omnipresence of personal narratives within stories is particularly relevant for interpreting stories and narratives. Therefore, this paper offers a framework in which to conceptualize the story formulation process and contributes to story and narrative analysis research methodologies.