IJMB Journal – Abstracts
International Journal of Management and Business
IJMB Volume III, Issue 1
Narrating a Story of Buenos Aires’: Fábricas Recuperadas
aProfessor Katarzyna Kosmala, Ph.D. and bDr. Miguel Imas
aFaculty of Business and Creative Industries
University of the West of Scotland, UK
katarzyna.kosmala@uws.ac.uk
bFaculty of Business and Law, Kingston University, UK
J.Imas@kingston.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
This paper offers methodological reflection on the process of representing organizations through narration as dialogical storytelling. This is illustrated here as a tale of socio-economic change and struggle for survival in Argentina’s Fábricas Recuperadas.
Fábricas Recuperadasis an umbrella term that refers to abandoned bankrupt businesses in Argentina. These businesses were initially recovered, at the time of the financial crisis in 2001, by workers themselves. By reclaiming the abandoned businesses, workers promoted alternative organizing practices such as the elimination of operational management and the flattening of organisational hierarchy structures. This paper draws on insight from ethnographic research in Buenos Aires-based Fábricas Recuperadas, revealing the self-construction processes of workers’ identities in the context of crisis, alongside the accounts of reclaiming their workplaces. Methodological insights emerge with regard to narrating interpretive research in relation to other cultural and language-based contexts.
The story is an attempt to re-territorialise the crisis experience, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s term (1972, 1980), that is, an attempt atrestructuring a narrative by bringing local perspective into the text.
Keywords:FábricasRecuperadas, narrative method, organization storytelling.
Click for full manuscript (PDF) or back to Volume 3-1, Table of Content