Never Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story: a Case Study Investigation into Extracting and Analysing Stories Using Catwoe

The use of storytelling as a knowledge elicitation tool has attracted much attention in recent years, yet there is limited literature on how to illicit or stimulate the story. The challenge is to find appropriate research instruments that stimulate storytelling and morph vocalised individual narratives into multifaceted stories that provide an insight into the emotions, politics and ‘life’ of organizations. This paper reports on the use of storytelling as a research instrument to elicit highly contextualized knowledge from knowledge holders. The intention was not to attempt to find an objective truth but rather to stimulate discursive openness. Specifically we present a technique based on CATWOE analysis that can stimulate storytelling and story creation. The technique is particularly useful for those who are new to the storytelling approach and provides a simple formalism for structuring story elicitation and analysis. The paper concludes by reflecting on the concept of ‘truth’ and the process of story emergence a legitimization, specifically identifying the contribution that alternative ‘truths’ can make in socializing and disseminating knowledge in organizations.