Being Entrepreneurial in Your Storytelling: An Institutional Tale

Being Entrepreneurial in Your Storytelling: An Institutional Tale

Lianne Lefsrud University of Alberta – Department of Strategic Management and Organization

P. Devereaux Jennings University of Alberta – Department of Strategic Management and Organization

September 2013
Ross School of Business Paper No. 1207

Abstract: 
Stories help us make sense of the world around us and our role in it, including defining ‘success’. Stories reflect society and culture at large, but are also very context-specific; they involve particular individuals and organizations. Thus, stories are a powerful mechanism linking the society and the organization. We offer an institutional view of storytelling’s role in small businesses and entrepreneurial endeavors. In academic vernacular, from our institutional viewpoint, we examine the types of organizational stories told, their sources and processes of creation, along with their direct and indirect effects. In practical terms: what stories are told, how, why, and with what effect? To do so, we rely primarily on research and examples from organization theory, strategy and entrepreneurship, focusing on new and small ventures where possible. In our concluding discussion, we suggest potential directions for researchers and possible storytelling improvements for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Swiss confectionery king Richard Spruengli dies aged 97

Swiss confectionery king Richard Spruengli dies aged 97

8:57am EDT

ZURICH (Reuters) – Richard Spruengli, Switzerland’s confectionery king and creator of the “Luxemburgerli” bite-sized macaroons beloved by Swiss bankers, has died aged 97, his family announced on Wednesday. Part of a dynasty of confectioners who helped seal Switzerland’s reputation for producing premium chocolate, Spruengli took over the eponymous family patisserie on Zurich’s upmarket Paradeplatz in 1956. He masterminded the cafe’s flagship mini macaroons which have drawn bankers and tourists through the cafe doors for more than 50 years. In 1994, Spruengli handed control of the family business to a sixth generation of confectioners, his nephews Milan and Tomas Prenosil. The cafe, across the square from the headquarters of Credit Suisse and a stone’s throw from UBS, remains a favoured breakfast haunt for Zurich financiers. The family ran the Paradeplatz cafe, opened in 1859, in tandem with a chocolate factory on the banks of Lake Zurich until 1892 when the business was divided between two brothers. The younger brother took the Spruengli cafe business while the older acquired the factory, which later became premium chocolate producer Lindt & Spruengli, the maker of Lindor pralines and gold foil-wrapped chocolate Easter bunnies. The two businesses have operated as independent companies since the split. A family announcement in the Tages Anzeiger newspaper said Spruengli died last Friday.

8 Questions for 3 Buffetts

OCTOBER 23, 2013, 3:11 PM

8 Questions for 3 Buffetts

By JEFFREY GOLDFARB

Warren E. Buffett’s son Howard Graham Buffett and his grandson Howard Warren Buffett have written a new book, “Forty Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World,” which chronicles their philanthropic work on hunger, farming and poverty around the world. This is an edited transcript of a discussion with Warren Buffett, his son and grandson.

Q. We’ve heard a lot about efficient markets over the past week thanks to the Nobel Prizes. Warren, you’ve made a career out of exploiting inefficiencies. It’s hard not to come away from this book without thinking that food and agriculture are the most inefficient markets in the world. Why is that?

Howard Graham Buffett In the United States, it’s different than in Africa. In a developed country like ours, most of it has to do with distribution systems. In many cases, it has to do with not having enough labor to deal with some of the food that we produce. Our issues are not safety or, in most cases, accessibility. Accessibility can be an issue in rural areas. Affordability is less of an issue. Of course, it’s an issue for some people. A lot of it has to do with what our policies and rules are and whether that allows organizations to operate and function within them. And some of those rules are a bit prohibitive. If you move to Africa, that gets really complex. It’s leadership, corruption, infrastructure, you name it. In eastern Congo, we just finished building — we didn’t build it, but we funded it — the building of a very small hydroelectric plant. And when it was completed, there were two European companies that came immediately. One is producing soap because the Democratic Republic of Congo doesn’t produce any soap and the raw materials are there. And one is extracting enzymes from papaya. Before, they had no power, so now they can do the processing. Sometimes, the things we think are so simple but not so easy to grasp are the things that work the best. Even in the middle of conflict, we are able to provide business opportunity. Read more of this post

Top Jap Woman Bureaucrat Read 150 Books in Jail After False Charges; Fighter for justice

Top Woman Bureaucrat Read 150 Books in Jail After False Charges

On Atsuko Muraki’s first day of work in Japan’s bureaucracy 35 years ago, she was given an assignment: help make tea each morning for the entire section of 20-30 people.Her response was to do it — and ask for more work. “I felt it couldn’t be helped,” Muraki said. “At the same time, I asked my manager not to go easy on me in terms of my main duties. He trained me properly.” Today, Muraki is administrative vice minister at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan’s most senior female bureaucrat and the second woman ever to reach that rank. Along the way she had to overcome not just discrimination but corruption charges that later proved to be false. During the investigation she spent five months in detention. The 57-year-old mother of two is a symbol of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pledge to put women in 30 percent of leadership positions in Japan by 2020. Halting women’s tendency to drop out of the labor market in their 30s would release an untapped resource and bolster growth in the world’s third largest economy as the workforce shrinks, Abe says. He has cited the influence of Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs. Matsui wrote in an update this year to her long-running “Womenomics” report that increasing female employment to match that of males would mean 8 million more people in the labor force and a gross domestic product as much as 14 percent higher. Read more of this post

Teenage Golfer Lydia Ko Turns Professional Via Social Media

Teenage Golfer Lydia Ko Turns Professional Via Social Media

Lydia Ko, the world’s top-ranked woman amateur golfer, said she’s turned professional and plans to play for cash for the first time at next month’s season-ending LPGA Tour event in Florida. Ko, a 16-year-old New Zealander who became the youngest winner of an LPGA title last year, made the announcement today via a YouTube video posted on her Twitter account in which she features in a skit with All Blacks rugby player Israel Dagg. “She was reluctant to hold a traditional press conference,” New Zealand Golf Chief Executive Officer Dean Murphy said in a statement. “She has also been very busy studying for exams and wanted to make this announcement in a different way.” Read more of this post

Japan’s Cuisine Set to Be Deemed Intangible Cultural Heritage

October 24, 2013, 9:20 AM

Japan’s Cuisine Set to Be Deemed Intangible Cultural Heritage

By Yumi Otagaki

Japan’s widely diverse cuisine ranging from sushi to ramen is one step closer to becoming a UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage. Following in the footsteps of a number of other countries who have received recognition for their food, Japan has applied to have its traditional diet also receive the designation. Read more of this post

Astronomers discover most distant galaxy yet

Astronomers discover most distant galaxy yet

6:53pm EDT

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Astronomers have found the most distant galaxy yet, a discovery that pushes back scientists’ view of the universe to about 700 million years after it is thought to have come into existence. Light from the galaxy, designated by scientists as z8_GND_5296, took about 13.1 billion years to reach the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, both of which detected the galaxy in infrared light. Read more of this post

Vietnamese police have arrested the owner of an unlicensed cosmetic surgery centre after he allegedly threw the body of a patient who died during a botched operation into a river

Vietnam arrests cosmetic surgeon over missing patient

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 – 18:15

AFP

HANOI – Vietnamese police have arrested the owner of an unlicensed cosmetic surgery centre after he allegedly threw the body of a patient who died during a botched operation into a river, state media said Wednesday. The 39-year-old woman, who has not been seen since Saturday, is believed by police to have died on the operating table while undergoing a breast enhancement procedure, according to the official Vietnam News Agency. Read more of this post