Towards a theory of organizational storytelling for public relations: An engagement perspective

In this paper, organizational storytelling is defined as planned communication by. organizations that deliberately uses specific forms of content and delivery behavior to. engage audiences (both internal to the organization and outside it) cognitively and. affectively primarily for the achievement of organizational goals and objectives. But. there is little in the literature to show how organizational storytelling fits into the. theoretical lexicon of public relations; or to guide practitioners in how to adapt. storytelling to suit organizational purposes. There is even less discussion from either. perspective on how public relations can contribute to organizational storytelling. Stories are often described as being engaging, but little has been written to explain. why this is. Extant research tends to focus on the significance of engaging of. audiences with stories, rather than understanding how stories engage. This paper. adopts an engagement perspective on storytelling in general to identify the cognitive,. affective, and behavioral aspects of its elements (characters, plots etc.). The same lens. is then applied to organizational stories and shows how they use the elements of. engagement to convey organizational key messages. The paper also highlights. differences between storytelling and organizational storytelling. These findings are. incorporated into a checklist for practitioners to help them identify, create, critique, and. improve organizational storytelling in their work. In addition, the paper suggests ways. in which public relations can bring its uniquely relational perspective to contribute to. organizational storytelling by empowering stakeholder storytelling to organizations and. listening by organizations.