Excavating the Paths of Meaning, Renewal, and Empowerment

Although myths have been comprehensively examined at a cultural or macro level in organizational studies, they have received little attention at an individual level of analysis. This article uses Campbell's "hero's journey" as an analogy for understanding managerial performance myths. The article begins with a review of the literature on individual myths and the hero's journey and then turns to an empirical exploration of managerial high-performance myths. A typology of managerial high-performance myths is derived from data on high-performance experiences. Each of the four myths assumes a different meaning structure. The findings suggest a model for the construction of individual meaning systems in organizations. They also provide important insights on empowerment, leadership, and high performance.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68602/2/10.1177_105649269541005.pd

'I am the person now I was always meant to be': identity reconstruction and narrative reframing in therapeutic community prisons

Drawing upon semi-ethnographic research, this article explores desistance in process among serious offenders residing in democratic therapeutic communities. It is argued that offender rehabilitation in therapeutic communities involves a process of purposive and agentic reconstruction of identity and narrative reframing, so that a ‘new’ and ‘better’ person emerges whose attitudes and behaviours cohere with long-term desistance from crime. This is possible because the prison-based therapeutic community, with its commitment to a radically ‘different’ culture and mode of rehabilitation, socially enables, produces and reinforces the emergence of someone ‘different’. The article therefore develops existing understandings of change in forensic therapeutic communities, and reaffirms theories of desistance which emphasize the importance of pro-social changes to the offender’s personal identity and self-narrative