Art of Management & Organization Conference 2018 University of Brighton

The Impact of Heroes, Villains and Victims in Popular Wall Street Narratives on Career Identity and Empathy of Business Students and Sales Professionals

Brokerhof, I.M.¹, Bal, P.M., ^1,2 Jansen, P.W.G. ¹, Solinger, O.N. <sup>1

1</sup> Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

² University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Wall Street and the financial crisis have inspired the creation of several popular narratives about this topic. Some of these narratives have a clear critical message towards Wall Street (Inside Job, Margin Call), displaying key characters as villains and customers as victims. They claim to raise awareness for the financial malpractices on Wall Street. Other Wall Street narratives mainly show the excessive lifestyle and greed of the Wall Street culture (The Wolf of Wall Street, Wall Street). Depending on the audience, these main characters might be seen as either heroes or villains, or possibly a combination of both, hybrid heroes.
On a cultural level, popular culture shapes the shared narratives and beliefs surrounding jobs and the workplace (Boozer, 2003; Panayiotou & Kafiris, 2010), and on an individual level, narrative experiences influence people’s personal belief-systems (Appel, 2011) via mental processes that are similar to learning from experience (Mar, Djikic & Oatley, 2008). Such narrative impact processes predict that Wall Street narratives have an effect on people’s perceptions of Wall Street and the financial sector, resulting in differences in empathy and career identity.
This study investigates the impact of different Wall Street narratives on career identity, conceptualized as Possible (Future) Work Selves (PFWS; Markus & Nurius, 1986; Strauss, Griffin & Parker, 2012) and both implicit and self-reported empathy.
The self-reliance mechanism behind psychology of money research and dual-processing theory are used to investigate the impact of Wall Street narratives on viewers or readers. Can critical or realistic Wall Street narratives actually increase awareness of moral frames of PFWS and empathy in business school students and sales professionals? What is the impact of a victim, hero or villain narratives on people that work in or may aspire to work in the financial sector?
Three experiments were conducted 1) a lab experiment with business school students (n = 104), showing movies in ‘cinema style’ with either depicting the main characters as villains (critical perspective), heroes (excess lifestyle perspective) or both (high on excess lifestyle and criticism); 2) an online field experiment with business school students, using written narratives adding a condition with a story form a victim perspective (n = 129); 3) an online field experiment with sales professionals, using movie clips and focusing on a realistic perspective (n = 87). All experiments had a control group watching or reading a story about nature (planet earth or wildlife in Africa).
Results suggest that 1) In the hero-narratives displaying the excess lifestyle of people working in Wall Street the main characters are more often seen as desired PFWS, both by business school students as well as sales professionals. Students also showed lower moral frames for their PFWS. 2) Participants in hero conditions show less implicit empathy right after the narrative, one week later this effect was still significant for the group watching the ‘hero’ narrative. Showing a victim perspective increased implicit empathy of readers compared to the hero-stories.

THE HERO’S JOURNEY

Jack Pinter

In this experiential and interactive workshop, Jack Pinter will invite participants to discover the oldest and most universal framework for personal, collective and organisational change: The Hero’s Journey. A term coined by anthropologist Joseph Campbell in the 1940s, the Hero’s Journey describes a story paradigm that exists in every culture in the world. In each Hero’s Journey tale, we meet an ordinary person who, in service of collective success, chooses to tackle a great problem or confront a daunting obstacle. In the course of rising to these challenges, this person develops into a more extraordinary person—a hero and often a leader of others. The Hero’s Journey is an inspirational blueprint for personal and collective transformation, and is a powerful way for individuals, groups and organsiations to conceptualize, organise and realise their ambitions for their work and their lives.

In this rollicking rollercoaster of a 90 minute session, Jack Pinter will condense 5,000 years of wisdom from classic stories as he shares the stages in the Hero’s Journey framework by showing clips from a popular film. (Popcorn will be served). Participants will learn how villains energise stories by challenging protagonists to move away from passivity and victimhood towards growth, development, self-actualisation and service. Each participant will also be asked to consider the next call to adventure that may invite her/him to cross a threshold and enter an unknown world, where he/she will gather allies, confront internal and external nemeses and explore the dilemmas that line the road of his/her own Hero’s Journey.

The Heroine’s Journey

Joanne Flinn

Moving from separation to synthesis based on the traditional Asian Yin & Yang, I am exploring the integration of the Yang (Masculine = Hero’s Journey) with the less discussed but potentially widely experienced Yin (Female = Heroine’s Journey) in the business and organizational construct.

Inspired by 20 years of corporate work in Asia and research originally completed for an MSc at HÈC Paris, the metaphor of Yin and Yang as Wholeness is widely appreciated in Asia yet most leadership styles and organizational stories focus on the Yang or Heroic side.

It appears that the Yin Feminine Dark side has it parallels with the European archetypes of Persephone and the Black Madonna. In organizational constructs, it may include the discussable elephants, the values violations and responsibility in uses of power.

Recent events at Uber, Facebook and in Entertainment show the challenges currently faced by leaders and organisations in this space. Travis Kalanick’s stepping down for leading a corrupted corporate culture, Mark Zuckerberg’s wrestling with Facebook’s responsibility arising from its social influence and even the shifts in social values seen in the exposure of media executives in the #MeToo movement.

In a masculised world, the journey of rediscovery of the Yin and its reintegration to the wholeness of leadership, organisations and life is the ‘Heroine’s Journey’.

I am currently deepening my exploration of the stages in the Heroine’s journey, calibrating it’s impact along with how it’s is experienced.

The research basis is social science, art and intervention: interviews along with artistic based interventions to enable the leaders, team or organization to explore and express some of the undiscussables using visual and performance art processes.

The early results are providing interesting results. Issues and topics that were creating on going performance issues in the pilot organization are more addressable. To mix the metaphor a touch, the Heroine’s Journey casts light into what was otherwise a dark, dangerous space, it’s now visible, valued and actionable.

What I’d like to bring to the Art of Management Organisation conference is the Heroine’s Journey Archetype along with two experiences: For the logical, analytical side of management: the ‘cost’ of the denied/undiscussed Yin to organizational performance. For the artistic, experiential side of management: the Heroine’s Journey as a group generated performance