Living in a Box, or a Genie in a Bottle? Archives as a Backbone for Corporate Storytelling

Abstract

Corporate storytelling can be an instrument for evidence-based management. This requires that the prevailing stories are built upon verifiable facts. Archival records are perhaps the best source for identifying these. A sound culture for storytelling should be built upon good archives actively used to verify and develop narratives about the company. As an example this article presents a short analysis of multimodal texts from the Norwegian oil company Statoil based on common theories of texts and narratives. We found that archival records from Statoil’s first years of activity give evidence that the company has been living up to its value statements. The company’s current values; open, courageous, hands-on & caring, thus seem to be well founded in the corporate history. The value statements therefore may be regarded as suitable guiding concepts for robust corporate storytelling.