The Use of Narratives in Organizational Socialization Process in A Thai Film Production House

Abstract

           This qualitative research was aimed at studying the narratives used in the organizational socialization process and the new employees’ perception towards the narratives. The data were mainly gathered through in-depth interviews with 16 participants, including the executives and the new employees, and through participatory observation.

            The results revealed as follows: The organization’s culture and core values reflected in the narratives shared with the employees consisted of hedonism, a family of professionals, and the belief in supernatural power. The value of a family of professionals was implied through fraternal practices as well as the home-like office design. In terms of the belief in supernatural power, the executives adopted this value later so as to cope with the unpredictable situations in this industry. In addition, it was found that the narratives used in the organizational socialization process corresponded with the organization’s culture and core values, background, mistakes, lessons learned, achievements, collective pride, and belief in supernatural power. The narrative used in the socialization tactics was applied at both the individual and the collective settings, in both the formal and the informal settings, and at both the serial and the variable settings. With regard to the new employees’ perception, the new employees perceived the organization’s culture and core values, namely the belief in supernatural power, a family of professionals, and hedonism respectively. Concerning the acceptance and meaning negotiation following the socialization process, there were both the employees who accepted and rejected the organization’s culture and core values, and there were both employees who preferred to continue and preferred to discontinue working for the organization.