Abstract
One of the qualitative methodologies that the South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases is encouraging its potential authors to use is narrative inquiry or narrative analysis. One of the previous editorials has touched base on this methodology (Volume 13, Issue 2). This editorial is particularly dedicated to this captivating methodology.
How do people make sense of themselves and their world through the stories they tell? As stories, storytelling and storyteller are rapidly occupying the centre stage in qualitative research, narrative analysis amongst its contemporaries stands temporally poised for a leap into addressing the growing need to understand human experience in its complexity, context, and meaning-making. Unlike other qualitative approaches that emphasize themes, categories, or discourse patterns, narrative analysis attends to the form, function, and context of stories as dynamic, meaning-making acts (Saint Arnault & Sinko, 2021). Its uniqueness lies in its focus on temporality (McAllum et al., 2019), structure, meaning-making (Saint Arnault & Sinko, 2021), and voice (Abkhezr et al., 2018)—four interrelated dimensions that together explain the complexity of lived experience. In other words, narrative analysis offers insights into understanding how people and communities engage in dialogue in times wrought with social fragmentation, digital mediation, and global instability. This editorial reflects on the evolving contours of narrative analysis, situating its current trajectories within the broader methodological and ethical debates in qualitative inquiry.
Fundamentally, narrative analysis acknowledges that humans use stories to remember, think, and communicate (Bruner, 1990). It structures lived experiences into logical sequences to convey social relationships, values, and emotions (Boudens, 2005). By analyzing these stories, qualitative researchers delve into the process of meaning-making. This focus on meaning-making aligns closely with the interpretivist and constructivist foundations of qualitative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Additionally, because of its dual focus on structure and agency, narrative analysis serves as a methodological link between the social and personal space, with culture, language, history and power dynamics influencing individual narratives (Frank, 2010; Riessman, 2008). Thus, narrative analysis opens social discourse- such as those pertaining to gender, migration, disease, or inequality—to become experienced realities in people’s lives.
With the rise of digital and social media, stories have now transformed as being differently produced, shared, and consumed (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Gubrium, 2023). Scholars now come across multimodal narratives combining text, image, and sound—and that unfold across online and offline spaces and as such, narrative analysis extends an adaptable and interpretive framework, well-suited to address these evolving forms of expression. Finally, narrative analysis resonates with the ethical and reflexive turn in qualitative research, inviting researchers to relationally engage with participants bearing its moral and ethical implications in mind (Bhattacharya, 2021). In this way, narrative analysis is not just a method of inquiry but also a practice of care, dialogue, and accountability.
Stories as Sites of Knowing
In the ever-expanding terrain of qualitative social research, as part of a broader ‘narrative turn’ that challenged traditional positivist approaches to human experience, narrative analysis has re-emerged as both method and movement—across disciplines, with stories becoming more than mere vehicles of communication; recognized as epistemic acts, performative constructs, and ethical engagements with human experience (Frank, 2010; Riessman, 2008). From Bruner’s (1990) concept of the narrative construction of reality to the narrative turn in sociology and anthropology, narrative analysis has long been the cornerstone of interpretive inquiry (Polkinghorne, 1988). With seminal authors such as the sociolinguistic work Labov (1972) that laid the foundation for structural approaches analyzing oral narratives; or the cognitive psychologist’ Bruner (1986, 1990) emphasis that humans construct reality through stories; or Polkinghorne (1988) distinctive work on narrative as a mode of knowing and narrative as an analytic approach; or Riessman (1993, 2008) research on narrative analysis methods introducing thematic, structural, and dialogic approaches that emphasized meaning-making, voice, and relational context; each one of them presented groundbreaking insights into narrative analysis and its potential to understand human experiences.
The Bedrock of Narrative Analysis
In qualitative social research, narratives serve as both data and a method, offering access to subjective meaning-making, while also inviting reflexive interrogation of the researcher’s interpretive stance (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The epistemological assumptions underlying narrative inquiry— interpretivism, constructivism, and hermeneutics—position stories as co-constructed between teller and listener. In this sense, narrative analysis resists the positivist logic of objectivity and instead foregrounds meaning, multiplicity, and situated knowledge. In this editorial, I talk about its four unique grounding principles: temporality, structure, meaning-making and voice.
Temporality is foundational to narrative inquiry. Stories unfold across time, linking past experiences, connecting them to present understandings, and stretching them to imagined futures (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). This temporal structure enables individuals to structure their experiences and interpret their lives as coherent and evolving.
The importance of temporality in narrative research within an organizational context has been particularly emphasized by Cunliffe et al. (2004). They coined the term Narrative Temporality emphasizing that ‘… experience and consciousness of time is not so straightforward and that … we need to embrace more nuanced and dynamic notions of temporality as a means of grounding our research in human experience’. However, the question remains how to analyze time—time can be seen as either objective time (based on actual time) or subjective time (based on how humans experience time as past, present or future [Cunliffe et al., 2004; Shipp & Jansen, 2021]). Understanding a story from both perspectives is equally important (Shipp & Jansen, 2021).
For example, you are studying the stories how individuals who have experienced workplace harassment, and they narrate about their meeting with the grievance committee, which took place several days after the complaint, and they mention that due to the delay in the first meeting, the intensity of the effect of the harassment reduced in the minds of the witnesses. This example highlights that the actual time (objective) makes a difference in how the importance of a past incident is reduced (subjective time). Thus, time is a crucial element of the narrative research as it highlights the processual nature of human life, considering experiences as an ongoing story (Polkinghorne, 1988).
Another defining feature of narrative analysis is its attention to structure—the formal organization and sequencing of narrative elements. Early structural models, such as Labov’s (1972) framework, identified common components of storytelling:
Abstract: which provides the story’s importance and relevance for the reader, it is the overview of the whole study. For instance, a study unfolding the persistence of bullying by peers resulting in being fired.
Orientation: focuses on the characters, time and place, etc. Simply put, it presents the context of the story. The temporality of the story is also captured here. Taking the previous example forward—presenting the victim of the bullying working in an MNC known for its harmonious work culture, then introducing the bully.
Complicating action: here the story unfolds, and the sequencing is presented of intense and critical turning points. Like presenting how bullying was done and mentioning specific instances of humiliation or spreading rumours, etc., that are significant in the experience of the narrator.
Evaluation: this part of the structure is about why the story is important to the narrator, talking about their feelings and attitude towards the story. An example would be that part of the narrative where the target of bullying explains how the experience affected them emotionally, psychologically, physically and or career-wise. So, how the story has made an impact on the narrator is to be focused on.
Resolution: resolution is the outcome of the story; in the example presented instance, it may be about being fired. The word ‘resolution’ may seem like the ending is positive; however, that may not necessarily be the case.
Coda: it is that part of the story when it is the closure of the study and brought back to the present, it reflects on the moral of the study, what the narrator learnt from the plot. Here, the narrator would give an account of their reflection on their bullying experience—for example, ‘silence enables bullies’, which would be the final finding of your study.
Thus, the story is put together with a beginning (Abstract), Middle (Complication, Evaluation, Resolution) and End (Coda) (Lambrou, 2005), giving it coherence and momentum. Later scholars extended this focus to include narrative genres, plotlines, and turning points that shape how events are rendered meaningful (Riessman, 2008). Structure can be applied by scholars in different ways. As explained by Riessman
Structure can refer to genre, or to an overarching ‘storyline’ (e.g., episodes [or incidents of harassment in workplace]). Investigators can graph the contours of a career overtime … marking the turning points, peaks and valleys, thus creating a visual representation of the investigator’s reading of patterns across a group of biographical narratives [For example, how continued workplace bullying and dealing within it may have interfered the career trajectory of the participant]. For other investigators, ‘structure’ refers to brief embedded moments in a conversation that take a poetic form [For example, a person using poetry to depict their experience of bullying, and it providing embedded moments to the researcher about the storyline]. (2008, p. 79)
Hence, the way the structure of narratives is understood is not universal rather can be analyzed creatively. In essence, by examining structure, researchers uncover how narrators organize experience, signal significance, and invite interpretation and give preference to form over content, unlike other qualitative approaches.
Narrative analysis is primarily concerned with how people make meaning from experience. Stories are not neutral reflections of reality; they are interpretive constructions that express emotion, moral judgement, and identity (Bruner, 1990; Frank, 2010). A quick example from workplace bullying would be that the narrator may describe repeated humiliation as the cause of severe anxiety. Hence, the narrator tries to attach meaning to the experiences through structuring them in a sequential manner.
Through narratives, people assign causality, responsibility, and purpose to events, thereby shaping their sense of self and social world. For the researcher, analyzing meaning-making involves paying attention to metaphors, symbols, and turning points that reveal deeper layers of interpretation. Hence, meaning-making is being done by both the narrator and the inquirer. As I put my Hutchinson’s ‘Meaning-making is complex; it is a curriculum-making process for both the inquirer and the participant’ (2019, p. 84).
This focus on narrative meaning-making distinguishes narrative analysis from methods that treat language as data to be coded or categorized (Riessman, 2008). Instead, narrative analysis treats storytelling as a cultural and psychological process of constructing reality.
Finally, narrative analysis is committed to bringing out the voice—that represents the storyteller’s side of the story in its entire complexity and context. Such an attention to voice acknowledges both the narrator’s agency in shaping their story and the researcher’s responsibility in interpreting and re-presenting it (Bhattacharya, 2021; Riessman, 2008). Thus, ‘voice’ extends its boundaries beyond literal speech, moving on to include emotions, pauses, silence, hesitation, and relational dynamics. Narrative analysis thus takes special focus on the ethical dimensions of qualitative inquiry—whose voices are heard, how they are mediated, and how power circulates through the act of narration (Andrews et al., 2019). The challenge for the researcher is to preserve the storyteller’s integrity while situating their account within larger cultural and structural contexts. This ethical reflexivity sets narrative analysis apart as a deeply relational, sensitive and participatory form of inquiry.
Forms of Narrative Analysis
Narrative analysis encompasses a diverse range of meaning-making interpretive approaches, each emphasizing different aspects of storytelling—structure, content, interaction, or medium. The four commonly discussed are structural, thematic, dialogic/performance, and visual/multimodal approaches. Structural narrative analysis examines how stories are organized—their internal architecture, sequencing, and linguistic features. This approach originated in the sociolinguistic work of Labov (1972), who proposed that narratives typically follow a set of components: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution, and coda. Each element contributes to narrative coherence and helps convey what is at stake in the telling. Thematic narrative analysis focuses on what is said—the recurring meanings, experiences, or issues that emerge across one or more narratives. Unlike structural approaches, which prioritize linguistic form, thematic analyses extract central ideas or motifs that reflect participants’ lived realities (Riessman, 2008; Squire et al., 2014). Thematic narrative analysis can be applied to individual stories or across cases to identify shared patterns of experience while still preserving each narrative’s coherence. Dialogic or performance narrative analysis views storytelling as a relational and performative act rather than a static text (Bamberg, 2012; Riessman, 2008). Drawing on sociolinguistics, performance theory, and interactionism, this approach explores how stories are co-constructed between narrators and audiences and how storytellers perform identity, emotion, and agency through their narratives. As storytelling increasingly occurs through digital and visual media, visual and multimodal narrative analysis has become an important extension of traditional narrative approaches. This type of analysis interprets visual, digital, and performative forms of storytelling—such as photographs, videos, comics or social media narratives—as carriers of narrative meaning (Gubrium, 2023; Gubrium & Harper, 2023).
Narrative as Relational Praxis
As an author deeply engaged in qualitative inquiry, I view narrative analysis not merely as an analytic tool but as a relational praxis. The process of engaging with participants’ stories is inherently dialogic, demanding humility, empathy, and ethical attentiveness to detail. The researcher’s interpretation is never detached—rather shaped by one’s positionality, values, and emotional responses (Ellis et al., 2011). In this sense, narrative work is as much about listening as it is about analysis.
Reflexivity thus lies at the heart of rigorous narrative research. It requires ongoing questioning: What assumptions do I bring to this story? Whose voice is getting amplified? othered or marginalized in my interpretation? What are the underlying power dynamics in the story? These questions transform narrative analysis into a moral engagement with the world.
Methodological Pluralism
Narrative analysis is a constellation of interpretive practices, inviting methodological pluralism and practice. Labov’s (1972) structural analysis dissects narrative form into components such as abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, and resolution. In contrast, Riessman’s (2008) thematic and dialogic approaches attend to what stories mean and how they are told in relational contexts. Performance-oriented analyses explore how storytelling enacts identity and agency before an audience. For instance, digital and visual storytelling (Couldry, 2020; Gubrium & Harper, 2023) invite multimodal interpretations of lived experience, while collaborative narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018) redefines the boundaries between researcher and participant. These methodological expansions reflect the adaptability of narrative inquiry to new forms of communication and the evolving ethics of representation in research. This plurality is both a strength and a challenge, enabling creativity and responsiveness to diverse contexts on one hand while risking conceptual vagueness on the other.
Positioning Narrative Analysis Within the Current Methodological Debates
In the current methodological trends, narrative analysis aligns with several other movements in qualitative research. First, it resonates with the ongoing emphasis on reflexivity and positionality, where researchers acknowledge relational engagement and their interpretive role in co-constructing knowledge (Clandinin, 2013; Riessman, 2008). Such a shift reflects a deeper epistemic humility and appreciation that all research narratives, including the researcher’s own, are partial and situated. Second, with foregrounding issues of voice, representation, and power—asking whose stories are told and under what conditions, narrative analysis contributes to the ethical and political turn in qualitative inquiry (Andrews et al., 2019; Bhattacharya, 2021). Challenging western narratives of linearity and individualism, narrative analysis thus provides tools to explore plural forms of contextual storytelling, particularly those emerging from marginalized or indigenous contexts (Smith, 2021). Third, the blending of narrative approaches with other qualitative methods like digital ethnography, Netnography, autoethnography, arts-based inquiry, and participatory storytelling all draw from narrative principles to capture lived experience in multimodal ways, encouraging methodological pluralism in narrative analysis underscores the adaptability of narrative analysis to new epistemic contexts (Ellis et al., 2011; Gubrium, 2023).
Emerging Research Innovations in Narrative Analysis
Narrative analysis, while firmly established in qualitative research, continues to evolve. Three particularly salient areas of innovation are digital and AI-assisted narrative analysis, cross-cultural storytelling frameworks, and intersectional or decolonial narrative work.
Recent innovations involve AI-assisted narrative analysis, where computational tools support the identification of themes, narrative arcs, or sentiment patterns across large datasets (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Gubrium, 2023). While such tools offer efficiency and scale, they also spark debates about the risk of reducing narratives to quantifiable elements, potentially overlooking the subtlety, emotion, and relational dimensions of storytelling. Cross-cultural narrative frameworks recognize that narrative forms vary widely across communities and contexts, often emphasizing collective experience, cyclical temporality, oral traditions, or relationality rather than a single coherent plot (Hyvärinen, 2010; Smith, 2021). Intersectional and decolonial approaches are transforming narrative analysis by foregrounding the social, historical, and political contexts of storytelling. Intersectionality, as articulated by Crenshaw (1989) and extended in qualitative inquiry, directs attention to how overlapping identities—such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability—shape narrative construction and reception. Narrative researchers are increasingly interrogating how power, privilege, and marginalization influence both the stories people tell and the ways researchers interpret them (Andrews et al., 2019; Bhattacharya, 2021).
Looking Forward: Reclaiming Lived Experiences and Story as Social Inquiry
The future of narrative analysis in qualitative social research depends on our ability to capture the essence of the stories in their multiplicity of human experiences while maintaining rigour. A renewed interest in narrative analysis promises hope to reclaim storytelling as a mode of knowing, offering human-centred focus with potential to connect micro-level experience with macro-level social forces for understanding how people live, tell, and transform their worlds.