Change a Story: Change a Life

• In Event: Uprooting Excessive Entitlement: A New Direction in Understanding and Dismantling Racial Injustice

Abstract

Background
Currently, “shifting the narrative” is an expression that is in vogue. To change a story’s plotline, one can strip it of previous biases or new forms of excessive entitlement can be introduced to it (Ratnam & Author, 2021). Excessive entitlement is the enacted belief that one’s voice, opinion or assessment holds more weight than others (Author, in press). Where academia is concerned, excessive entitlement is described as a kind of greediness where certain individuals elevate themselves and lord their perceptions over others (Asadi & Ali, 2021). Narratives can be shifted for the good and the not-so-good. They also can be unintentionally and intentionally changed. Just as people’s lives are composed of stories (Bateson, 2001), so, too, is organizational life captured in narratives (Gabriel, 2015).
Perspective and Purpose
The stories of people’s lives unavoidably become entangled in work situations (Squires, 2020). We may be the main character in our own narratives but others—unbeknown to them—may play supporting roles and vice versa. Told from a bystander perspective, this paper’s purpose is to chronicle how excessive entitlement was overcome in a university setting.
Supporting Evidence
The main character was assigned the lead role without him personally knowing it. The topic in the organizational whisper network was his readiness to be promoted. In the past, leadership had viewed him as underperforming despite him chairing an international educational organization and having more citations than most faculty—with both these pieces of evidence being coins of the realm in research-intensive universities. As fate would have it, department leadership changed. So did college leadership shift. New faculty members were appointed as well. Also, some faculty retired. The new faculty —who recognized that certain individuals in the unit had been shown favor beyond what they deserved, and others had been afforded less recognition—shifted the narrative. They imagined they were talking generally about department inequities. They did not see themselves as seeding a counter story (Lindemann & Nelson, 2001) that would quickly spread. The new leader, however, interpreted their sense-making as a show of support for the supposedly underachieving male. The new leader—who may have acted out of a sense of justice, the need to show leadership acumen or both—then communicated the new faculty members’ opinion to others, including the college leadership. What was shared was that the male’s career was no longer at an impasse—that he was ready to be promoted, despite his contributions not substantially changing.
Method
This narrative inquiry research uses broadening to set the research context, burrowing to unearth personal/institutional stories, and storying and re-storying to demonstrate how the shifting of the narrative happened (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Fictionalization (Caine et al., 2017) is additionally used to mask identities so the story can be shared without causing harming to those who were a part in it.
Significance
This research adds to what is known about counter stories and their impact within educational organizations. The work demonstrates how excessive entitlement was organically dismantled in a local setting.

Author

• Cheryl J. Craig, Texas A&M University