The poem, Coyote and Brother Crow: A Little History, was written to be presented to new employees with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). It was meant as a catalyst to provide a timeline of events, promote discussion, and uncover diverse perspectives among those employees. Although on one level the poem is (hopefully!) a creative, entertaining presentation of history, on another level it is deep-rooted in the value of storytelling as a means to champion sensemaking and to develop insight. There are some theoretical foundations that may support the storytelling value of a creative piece.

We propose in this article to take a story approach to organizational analysis. This implies that organizational life is perceived as polyphonic, equivocal, dialogical, unfinished and unresolved. We describe this approach as antenarrative inquiry in that it seeks to question established truths and moralities embedded in the narratives of the present. Antenarrative inquiry thus suspends beginnings, middles and ends in narratives and gives room for other voices. We propose Foucault’s power analysis, genealogy, as a method for antenarrative inquiry. We demonstrate the ideas of genealogy by relating it to Ricoeur’s work on narrative and time where experience is portrayed as a mimetic circle where endpoints lead back to pre-narration. We argue instead that organizational life is result of complex chains of interactions, negotiations and struggles. Genealogical scrutiny thus shakes up the mimetic circle and opens up for new interpretations of organizational life by revealing the power relations embedded in the conditions in which this life is storied and re-storied.

This paper is about an entrepreneurial fraternity and its role in reworking and reframing entrepreneurial excess. We achieve this through considering the historical presentation of the entrepreneur as an isolated individual, a maverick, can be mediated through the adoption of historical modes of organisation that have been appropriated to provide conformity, legitimacy and a sense of belonging. To achieve the purpose of our paper we examine the website of the Memphis based society of entrepreneurs (www.societyofentrepreneurs.com). Through examination of stories on the website, we show how the conservativeness of the stories presented may play a key role in creating a entrepreneurial identity that counters the rebellious and recklessness of the young turks. We suggest that while these modes of organisation may initially seek to curb entrepreneurial excess, in time, they have the potential to be abused, and thus, in themselves, become a form of excess.