2021: a campus odyssey

This chapter is based on a study carried out as a narrative collage – a research method aimed at the collection of fictive narratives from a chosen group of social actors concerned with a certain idea or phenomenon (Kostera 2006). The researcher asks respondents to compose a story on a given topic or beginning with a given sentence. I have asked a number of different social actors with various organizational experiences, students, researchers, management practitioners, and artists, from different countries, to write short fictive stories beginning with the phrase: "The big banner by the entrance proclaimed: ‘Happy New Year 2021!' A group of students entered campus and looked around. Adam spoke first: ‘Don't know about you, but I…'." The stories are to be between 1/2 and 3 pages A4, any genre, any plot or plots, wherever imagination takes their authors. They are welcome to invent further characters, add context, place and detail. I read and interpret the stories, looking into the ways in which the authors use or approach characters, plots and archetypes, and in particular the idea of the university as envisaged in the story. The complete process does not offer any general theories or even local models about how reality works; instead, if it is carried out well, it throws new light on a part of the cultural context of organizing located within domain of imagination. Imagination is also a reality, even if it is not material. It has its laws and its rules, and can be regarded as a mental space where innovative and creative thinking can take place, and thus where potential for change originates.