Responding to competing narratives: lessons for project managers

This paper begins with the observation that people directly involved often express diametrically opposite views about the success or otherwise of major projects. If senior managers choose to ignore or suppress these competing narratives they may damage the quality and acceptability of the project. The paper proposes that competing narratives arise from the complexity of projects and their organisational context: it illustrates this by comparing three published case studies of major change. It then introduces two tested methods for using competing narratives constructively.