The Box-Of-Chocolate Phenonema: Using narratives to improve staff morale in large organisations

In 2010 a group of senior managers of the Manchester Metropolitan University, one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom with over 4000 members of staff, started a project to explore ways of encouraging a more positive attitude amongst the wider staff community and to begin to change perceptions of the organisation, i.e to change the cultural narrative of their own institution.

The objectives of the project was to use narratives - as a richer set of data - to provide a deeper understanding of how staff develop different identification factors in relation to the institution, locally as well as corporate and to devise and implement a strategy that would allow the institution to create a new and more positive narrative about itself. The investigation resulted in the development of a major institutional-wide initiative, which is in its early stages.