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Hence, this study takes on the attempt to address the importance of organizational
stories as they represent an organization’s reality (Gabriel, 2011c; Nieswandt, 2011) in
specific relation to the Malaysian context.. The researcher will concentrate on stories told by
middle managers in one of Malaysian organizations anonymously known as XYZ
organization. The focus will be on the middle managers because in a a vast number of
organizations, they are regarded as the most important and influential members that can help
researchers and consultants learn organizational culture (Heidrich, 2014). According to
Osterman (2009), middle managers are valuable assets for researchers in understanding an
organization because they possess enough knowledge and experiences about their
organization. McKinney (2013) also contends that middle managers have greater working
experiences because most of the managerial duties that are supposed to be completed by the
top level management are entrusted to them. For examples, they are required to develop and
implement organizational objectives, be well-versed in their organization’s activities, events
and products, as well as be able to deal and solve their organizations’ crises and conflicts, in
addition to being responsible in making important decisions for their organizations’ resources
(McKinney, 2013). With the amount of job responsibilities middle managers are expected to
accomplish, it can be inferred that middle managers are the most suitable group of employees
that can help the researcher in studying their organization. Listening and analysing their
stories can help the researcher understand and expose their organization’s culture. In support
of this, Hames (2015) concludes that the amount of activities performed by middle managers,
alongside their in-depth knowledge about their respective organisation, positions them on the
most influential hierarchy to help researchers in the study, compared to the other levels of
management.

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To end with, the statement of the problem of this study reads as follows: what stories
middle managers in Malaysian organization, namely XYZ, have about their organisation, and
how their stories act as the window to their organization’s reality.
3. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Certain organizations have been unaware of the importance of organizational stories,
and some large organizations have made several attempts to silence organizational stories that
they disapprove of (Gabriel, 2015). However, in the recent years, A vast number of
organisations have hired consultants to listen and study stories told by employees as they are
determined to reflect the state of the organisation. Stories are believed to have helped increase
the organizations’ health, state of communication, and performance (Gabriel, 2008). In other
words, using stories told by organisational members has continuously offered better
communication exchanges between different levels of management, enabled the leaders to
identify real concerns, thoughts and feelings of the employees, solved problems faced by
organizational members directly, and enabled them to learn from each other’s experience and
later strive to be better employees or employers.
This study will be a significant contribution to Malaysian organisations for a number
of reasons. Firstly, stories told by organisation members can help establish a good working
environment in which telling and listening to stories allow for negative emotions towards
other members to be resolved. Secondly, stories can help enhance the working practices and
productivities as the output coming from this study can help employees understand the vision
of leaders, and in return allow leaders to understand the needs of their employees. Lastly, the
knowledge produced from the present study can help increase the motivations of organisation
members to work at their organisation. This is because their voices are being heard and when
leaders are aware of the issues or problems faced by their employees, they will transform the
state of the working environment from being merely good to being a better working condition.

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