“How” Narratology Narrows the Organizational Theory–Practice Gap:

In this conceptual piece, we take a narrative approach to explicating the gap between organizational theory and practice. The narrative pentad (what, why, how, who, and when/where) represents six narrative questions metaphorically mapped to the five fingers of the hand. The narrative pentad has successfully served both narrative scholars and practitioners, and we believe that the narrative pentad holds similar promise as a theoretical framework for HRD scholars and practitioners. At the finger tips, spaces between fingers represent gaps between questions. In the organizational domain, the theory–practice gap is attributable primarily to a scholarly focus on the universal and abstract what and why questions (story in narrative terms) and a practitioner focus on the particular or embodied how question (discourse in narrative terms). Framed as similarities, we propose that all HRD questions are interrelated at the palm of the hand. In narrative terms, effective organizational theory must include both story a...