112 Strategic Leadership
Narratives are never told as raw facts or antiseptic histories, but as the tales of
participants. They are always shaped by the drama and tension of conflict: success
and failure, triumph and defeat, achievement and frustration, loyalty and betrayal
(cf. Denning 2005; Toma, Dubrow, and Hartley 2005).
The story as a narrative of identity displays the unique characteristics that set
the institution apart, and in which it takes pride. The place is recognizable in the
fragments of its story because they share in a narrative that makes sense of the parts
with reference to a larger whole and temporal sequence. Narratives also reach out
for larger stories, so each college interprets and reinterprets itself as participating in
the comprehensive narrative of certain traditions, norms, and practices of liberal
and professional education and the values of scholarly discovery. Postman again
helps us to understand the connection between local stories and master narratives
of education because they share a story “that tells of origins and envisions a future, a
story that constructs ideals, prescribes rules of conduct, provides a source of author-
ity, and, above all gives a sense of continuity and purpose” (Postman, quoted in Con-
nor 2004, 10). The story, then, is far more than a history, although it is revealed
in history. It lives in multiple recollections, but it is defined in shared memory and
in common meanings and values. Although not free from conflicting understand-
ings, its common meanings as a story of identity and its bearing on the future as a
narrative of aspiration can be coherently interpreted and widely affirmed.
Collegiate Sagas
The power of the generic idea of story has been applied to the study of higher
education in a variety of ways, so it can be illustrated in several forms. In The
Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore, the distinguished sociologist
of higher education Burton Clark (1970) used the notion of organizational saga
to capture the power of the cultural dimensions of experience in formal organiza-
tions. As such, a “saga is a collective understanding of a unique accomplishment
based on historical exploits of a formal organization, offering strong normative
bonds within and outside the organization. Believers give loyalty to the organiza-
tion and take pride and identity from it” (B. R. Clark 1991, 46). The concept of
saga can be taken as a strong form of what we have called story.
Each of the three colleges in Clark’s study illustrates different patterns of a saga,
although they share many common features. At Reed in 1920, a young president
created a new college in the Northwest of the United States to be a pure academic
community that prized nonconformity. Antioch, on the other hand, was an old
institution in slow decline before Arthur Morgan became its president in 1919.
Under this bold and charismatic president, the college introduced a novel plan to
alternate periods of study and work as part of general education. At Swarthmore, a
strong Quaker college responded to the leadership of its gifted and magnetic presi-
dent, Frank Aydelotte, to create an honors program inspired by the Oxford model.
Although not all institutional stories have the depth and salience of sagas, they
all display the characteristics of narratives of identity. Whether it is present in