Date of Award

1-1-2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Nobuya Iganaki

Abstract

Leaders are tasked with conveying a new organization’s identity via communication and behavior. Thus, this thesis is guided by the research question: “How can a leadership storytelling event prompt organizational identity change amongst internal stakeholders?” The term “storytelling event” is used to represent a story and the message that precedes or follows the narrative. This thesis examines a leadership storytelling event within a financial firm in which the CEO introduced a new organizational identity. The framing of an organizational identity is contingent upon the meaning produced by the language contained within the leader’s discourse. Using rhetorical analysis to analyze the storytelling event, this paper examines whether the CEO used “sensebreaking” and “sensegiving” rhetoric to prompt organizational identity change. The findings reveal the CEO framed the concept of change positively prior to introducing the new organizational identity attributes through a thematic structure embedded within the storytelling event. Additionally, the CEO did not use negative labels to erode the previous identity; rather, confluence was employed to construct the new identity.

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