Mining the Gap: Uncovering and Navigating Discrepancies Between Organizational and Individual Narratives

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Mission-driven organizations face a structural paradox: the very features that sustain their moral purpose—aspirational missions, deep staff investment, and legitimacy tied to success narratives—also generate systematic distortions between what organizations say and what members experience. We theorize these distortions as narrative gaps: patterned discrepancies in communication, understanding, and lived experience that emerge along lines of hierarchy and proximity to direct service.

We draw on evidence from two organizational ethnographies. The first examines a New England nonprofit designed to facilitate elite educational access for racially and economically marginalized students. The second centers on a public high school in the U.S. South navigating rapid immigration-related demographic change. Across sites, we conducted sustained participant observation and in-depth interviews with key organizational stakeholders (N = 104 and N = 120, respectively).

Across these contexts, we identify three recurring forms of narrative gaps. Power-structured gaps arise when less powerful actors cannot safely articulate differential experiences, leading students to manage moments of invalidation through silence and self-doubt. Loyalty-shaped gaps emerge when emotionally invested actors suppress critique, performing gratitude publicly while privately expressing resentment or ambivalence. Reputation-managed gaps occur when leadership curates organizational stories to preserve legitimacy, softening or obscuring conflict, exclusion, or harm.

We argue that qualitative inquiry is uniquely positioned to surface these gaps because it triangulates observation, interview, and sustained immersion, allowing researchers to hold multiple vantage points simultaneously. We conclude by outlining a framework for equitable research engagement with mission-driven organizations, demonstrating that naming narrative gaps can advance accountability without foreclosing partnership. For organizations committed to equity, the capacity for clear self-recognition is not peripheral to their mission but foundational to it.

Authors

• Garry Mitchell, Duke University

• Daphne Michelle Penn, Vanderbilt University