Narration
Mihaela CHIRU
Institute of Educational Sciences, BucharestHistory
Narration was promoted in the 1950s as a method offering to researchers and managers
the possibility of knowing and bettering from the inside the corporate culture. At the same
time, the method targeted the identification of the expectations of a consistent social
group represented by the white male worker predominantly involved in his professional
role.
Currently, the North-American and more recently the European culture no longer give
career the privileged status of lifelong commitment, as opposed to Japanese companies;
now the search is for flexible people who should fulfil various and unexpected tasks and
not workers loyal to a single type of activity throughout their active life. Careers are made
up of “selling individual services and competences to employers who have or want to
achieve certain projects” (Kalleberg, Reynolds, Marsden, apud Savikas, 2003).
Negotiating each new professional project allows a series of adjustments in offers,
demands, aims to achieve, remodelling the relation with production agents and the work
environment, internalising recently acquired knowledge, enlarging the area of
applicability of certain abilities, cultivating proactive development attitudes as well as
becoming aware of the need for continual improvement.
The professional narration of a person receives different coordinates in the post-industrial
era. Mobility is far more appreciated than stability, for it favours consecutive adaptations
to the new requirements of global economy, enlargement of the specialization horizon,
activating the formal / non-formal / informal / organizational learning resources,
expressing oneself in as complex a way as possible through work and work-related
creation.