Storytelling

The Impact Of Storytelling In Business

This course will take you on a learning journey to consider aspects of storytelling at the personal, organisational, and social levels. You’ll learn some key techniques and terminologies around considering stories normatively and critically, as well as seeing how organisations put them to work to help support their objectives.

We'll show you how stories can be used as a source of competitive advantage, as well as to support individuals as they navigate the structures and conventions of society. 

Whatever your job role, you should find some useful insights for how storytelling can help you work more effectively, either through telling your own stories, or hearing and evaluating those of others. 

Standalone Study Only

You will not be awarded credits for studying this course. It is available for standalone study only and cannot be counted towards an OU qualification.

What You Will Study

The course is divided into the following five units:

Unit 1 
The first unit looks at some of the theories of why people tell stories and introduce a critical framework for thinking about stories. We use some insights from anthropology to consider some theories about why storytelling might be important to humans.

Unit 2 
This unit leaves the realm of theory to look at some practical applications for storytelling as part of the ways we get by in social and workplace life. We introduce the unmanaged organisation, workplace gossip, and its role as social glue in work situations. 

Unit 3 
This unit will move from the storytelling you might hear in the personal sphere to introduce more formal uses for storytelling, including organisational stories and who gets to tell them. We will introduce ideas from discourse analysis as one way of analysing stories. 

Unit 4 
In this unit we use some case studies to consider the strategic aspects of storytelling. We also consider how organisations use stories to support communication and relationships with customers and other stakeholders. 

Unit 5 
The final unit offers a window on some other versions of stories we see in daily life, and how social institutions, such as medical professionals and the law, use stories to help convey legitimacy and authority in what might otherwise be difficult or confrontational situations. 

During this course you’ll watch videos that illustrate how storytelling might go on in a workplace and be able to explore the ideas in supporting text and exercises. You’ll see how an individual became a successful job applicant and started work, and how storytelling contributed here.

You Will Learn

 On successful completion of this course you should be able to: 

• understand how storytelling is a fundamental part of social and working life 

• explain what types of stories might be heard in a typical workplace and what purposes they might achieve 

• have confidence to communicate a definition of storytelling and its purposes for individuals and social and organisational groups 

• ?outline different sorts of stories: oral and written, formal and informal. 

Learner Support

This course was designed to be independently studied with no tutor support. StudentHome is a dedicated website that provides general study support and there is a computing helpdesk.

Teaching And Assessment

Assessment

There is an end-of-course quiz to test your knowledge and understanding. Once completed and successfully passed you will receive a digital badge and a course completion certificate which you can download as a record of your learning.