This paper examines narratives relating to the development of National Geo Information Infrastructures (NGII) in ethnographic research on a Dutch NGII project which was monitored throughout its course. We used an approach which focuses on narratives concerning the environment, groups and practice to elicit sense-making processes. We assert that narratives are relatively fixed and that they only change under specific circumstances. Moreover, the fixing of or change in narratives takes place in practice, so our research approach aimed at analysing narratives of practice, which we label ‘storyboards’. For this purpose, project meetings and conferences were observed, key persons both within and outside the project environment were interviewed, and an analysis of relevant documents and video footage was undertaken. Storyboards are created by actors as a result of day-to-day challenges related to project goals, technology and infrastructure. In our research we found that these storyboards occur as vicious circles from which actors cannot escape. In the specific case analysed, our interpretation of the narrative storyboards suggested that these vicious circles are caused by the inability of project participants to distinguish between infrastructure and innovation requirements in their daily work.
J. Crompvoets, “National spatial data clearinghouses, world- wide development and impact,” Wageningen Universiteit, Wageningen, 2006.
A. Rajabifard and I. Williamson, “Spatial data infrastructures: Concept, sdi hierarchy and future directions,” Geomatics 80, Tehran, Iran, 2001.
D. Nebert, “The SDI cookbook,” 2004. http://www. gsdi. org/pubs/cookbook/.
F. de Bree and A. Rajabifard, “Involving users in the process of using and sharing geo-information within the context of SDI initiatives,” Pharaohs to Geoinformatics, FIG Working week, 2005.
I. Masser, “GIS worlds: Creating spatial data infrastructures,” ESRI Press, Redlands CA, 2005.
Y. Georgiadou, S. K. Puri, and S. Sahay, “Towards a potential research agenda to guide the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures: A case study from India,” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Vol. 19, No. 10, pp. 1113–1130, 2005.
J. Crompvoets et al. eds, “A multi-view framework to assess SDIs,” Space for Geo-Information (RGI), Wageningen University and Centre for SDIs and Land Administration, Department of Geomatics, University of Mel-bourne, Melbourne, Australia, 2008.
H. Koerten, “Assessing the organisational aspects of SDI: Metaphors matter,” A Multi-View Framework to Assess SDIs, J. Crompvoets et al., Editors, Melbourne, pp. 235– 254, 2008.
Y. Georgiadou, O. Rodriguez-Pabón, and K. Lance, “Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and e-governance: A quest for appropriate evaluation approaches,” URISA Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 43–55, 2006.
W. van den Toorn and E. de Man, “Anticipating cultural factors of GDI,” in Geospatial data infrastructure: Concepts, cases and good practice, R. Groot and J. McLauglin, Editors, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.
E. de Man, “Cultural and institutional conditions for using geographic information: Access and participation,” URISA Journal, Vol. 15(APA I), pp. 29–33, 2003.
H. Koerten, “Blazing the trail or follow the Yellow Brick Road? On geo-information and organizing theory in GI days,” Young researchers Forum, 10–12 September 2007, F. Probst and C. Kessler, Editors, Institut für Geo-informatik, Universit?t Münster: Münster, Germany, pp. 85– 104, 2007.
D. Hodgson and S. Cicmil, eds., “Making projects critical,” in Management, Work and Organisations, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006.
A. van Marrewijk and M. Veenswijk, “The culture of project management: Understanding daily life in complex megapro-jects,” Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, UK, 2006.
H. Blumer, “Symbolic interactionism, perspective and method,” Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs ,NY, 1969.
G. Ritzer, “Modern sociological theory,” Mc Graw-Hill International Editions, NY, 1996.
E. Goffman, “The presentation of self in everyday life,” Doubleday Garden City, NY, 1959.
G. Goffman, “Frame analysis,” Harper & Row, NY, 1974.
G. Gonos, “‘Situation’ versus ‘Frame’: The ‘Interactionist’ and the ‘Structuralist’ analysis of everyday life,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 42, pp. 854–867, 1977.
P. Manning, “Erving Goffman and modern sociology”, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 1992.
J. Habermas, “The theory of communicative action,” Life-world and System, Beacon Press, Boston MA, Vol. 2, 1987.
A. Giddens, “Modernity and self-identity: Self and modernity in the late modern age,” Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 1991.
U. Beck, “Risk society,” Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, 1992.
G. Ritzer ed., “The McDonaldization of society revised edition,” Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks CA, 1996.
A. Giddens, “Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis,” Basing-stoke, MacMillan, 1979.
M. Archer, “Culture and agency: The place of culture in social theory,” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988.
P. Bourdieu and D. Pels, “Opstellen over smaak, habitus en het veldbegrip,” Van Gennep, Amsterdam, 1989.
P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, “The social construction of reality,” Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1967.
K. Gergen, “Realities and relationships, soundings in social construction,” Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1994.
D. Boje, “Stories of the storytelling organization: A post-modern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-Land’,” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 997–1035, 1995.
M. Berendse, H. Duijnhoven, and M. Veenswijk, “Editing narratives of change, identity and legitimacy in complex innovative infrastructure organizations,” Intervention Re-search, pp. 73–89, 2006.
D. Polkinghorne, “Narrative knowing and the human sciences,” State University of New York Press, NY, 1988.
M. Hatch and D. Yanow, “Organization theory as an interpretive science,” The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Theory, C. Knudsen and H. Tsoukas, Editors, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2003.
K. Verduijn, “Tales of entrepreneurship, contributions to understanding entrepreneurial life,” PhD thesis Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2007.
P. Ricoeur, “The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as text”, New Literary Society, Vol. 5, pp. 91– 120, 1973.
C. Oswick, T. Keenoy, and D. Grant, “Discourse, organizations and organizing: Concepts, objects and subjects,” Human Relations, Vol. 53, No. 9, pp. 1115–1124, 2000.
D. Grant, et al., eds, “Introduction: Organizational discourse: Exploring the field,” The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks CA, pp. 1–36, 2004.
D. Grant, T. Keenoy and C. Oswick, eds, “Discourse + Or-ganization,” Sage Publications Ltd, London, UK, 1998.
N. Frye, “Anatomy of criticism: Four essays,” Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1957.
K. Burke, “A grammar of motives,” University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969.
K. Gergen, “An invitation to social construction,” Sage, London, 1999.
Y. Gabriel, “Storytelling in organizations, facts, fictions, and fantasies,” Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2000.
T. Peters and R. Waterman, “In search of excellence, lessons from America’s best-run companies,” Harper & Row, New York, 1982.
S. Helmers and R. Buhr, “Corporate story-telling: The buxomly secretary, a pyrric victory of the male mind,” Scandinavian Journal of Management, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 175– 191, 1994.
E. Schein, “Culture: The missing concept in organization studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 229–240, 1996.
J. Brown, et al., “Storytelling in organizations: Why storytel-ling is transforming 21st century organizations and manage-ment,” Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington MA, 2005.
A. Brown, P. Stacey, and J. Nandhakumar, “Making sense of sensemaking narratives”, Human Relations, Vol. 6, No. 8, pp. 1035–1062, 2008.
K. E. Weick, “Sensemaking in organizations”, Sage Publications, London, 1995.
M. Veenswijk, “Surviving the innovation paradox: The case of Megaproject X,” The Innovation Journal, The Public sector Innovation Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 2, article 6, pp. 1–14, 2006.
J. Bruner, “The narrative construction of reality,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, pp. 1–21, 1991.
M. Alvesson and D. Karreman, “Variety of discourse: On the study of organizations through discourse analysis,” Human Relations, Vol. 53, No. 9, pp. 1125–1149, 2000.
C. Kohler Riessman, “Narrative analysis,” Sage Publications, Newbury Park CA, Vol. 30, 1993.
B. Czarniawska-Joerges, “A narrative approach to organiza-tion studies,” Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks CA, Vol. 43, 1998.
D. Yanow, “Conducting interpretive policy research,” Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks CA, 2000.
D. Boje, “Narrative methods for organizational and commu-nication research”, Sage Publications Ltd, London, 2001.
S. Tesselaar, I. Sabelis, and B. Ligtvoet, “Digesting stories: About the use of storytelling in a context of organizational change,” in 8th International Conference on Organizational Discourse 2008, London, UK, 2008.
N. Beech and C. Huxham, “Cycles of identity formation in inter-organizational collaborations,” International Stud-ies of Management & Organization, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 28–52, 2003.
T. Deal and A. Kennedy, “Corporate cultures: The rites and rituals of corporate life,” Penguin, 1982.
H. Bergson, “The creative mind,” Greenwood Press, West-port CT, 1946.
G. Burrell, “Back to the future: Time and organization, in rethinking organization, new directions in organization theory and analysis,” M. Reed and M. Hughes, Editors, Sage Publications Ltd, London, UK, pp. 165–183, 1992.
G. Burrell, “Time and talk,” Organization, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 371–372, 2000.
R. Chia, “Essay: Time, duration and simultaneity: Rethink-ing and change in organizational analysis,” Organization Studies, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 863–868, 2002.
M. Heidegger, “Sein und zeit [Being and time],” Tübin-gen D, Max Niemeyer, 1977.
B. Czarniawska-Joerges and G. Sevón, eds, “Translating organizational change,” ed. A. Kieser, de Gruyter Stud-ies in Organization, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, Germany, Vol. 56, 1996.
E. Schein, “Organizational culture and leadership,” Jossey Bass, 2nd Edition, 1992.
M. Douglas, “How institutions think”, Syracuse Univer-sity Press, Syracuse, 1986.
S. Chreim, “The continuity-change duality in narrative texts of organizational identity,” Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 567–593, 2005.
R. Harré, “Life sentences, aspects of the social role of language,” John Wiley & Sons, London, UK, 1976.
H. Lefebvre, “The production of space,” Blackwell Pub-lishers, Oxford, UK, 1991.
W. R. Scott, “Institutions and organizations,” Sage Pub-lications, 1995.
D. Yanow, “Built space as story: The policy stories that buildings tell,” Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 407–422, 1995.
D. Yanow, “How built spaces mean, in interpretation and method: Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn,” D. Yanow and P. Schwartz, Editors, M. E. Scharpe, Armonk NY, 2006.
M. Gastelaars, “Talking stuff: What do buildings tell us about an organization’s state of affairs?” in 8th International Conference on Organizational Discourse, London, UK, 2008.
B. Schneider, “The people make the place,” Personnel Psychology, pp. 437–453, 1987.
W. Orlikowski, “Using technology and constituting struc-tures: A practice lens for studying technology in organi-zations,” Organization Science, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 404– 428, 2000.
W. Bijker, “Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs, towards a theory of sociotechnical change,” The MIT Press, Cam-bridge, 1995.
W. Orlikowski, “Sociomaterial practices: Exploring tech-nology at work,” Organization Studies, Vol. 28, No. 9, pp. 1435–1448, 2007.
M. Lipsky, “Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services,” Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980.
S. Barley, “The alignment of technology and structure through roles and networks,” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35, pp. 61–103, 1990.
J. Bartunek, “The importance of contradictions in social interventions,” Intervention Research, Vol. 1, pp. 103– 113, 2004.
S. Ybema, “Constructing collective identity: Central, distinc-tive and enduring characteristics?” in 8th International Con-ference on Organizational Discourse, London, UK, 2008.
H. Garfinkel, “Studies in ethnomethodology,” Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984.
E. Wenger, “Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity,” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998.
B. Latour and S. Woolgar, “Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts,” Princeton University Press, 1986.
K. Golden-Biddle and K. Locke, “Appealing work: An investigation of how ethnographic texts convince”, Or-ganization Science, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 595–616, 1993.
H. Duijnhoven, “Tales of Security practices within Spanish and Dutch railway operators: Translation, transformation or transgression?” in 8th International Conference on Organizational Discourse, London, UK, 2008.
T. Watson, “Ethnographic fiction science: Making sense of managerial work and organizational research processes with Caroline and Terry,” Organization, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 489–510, 2000.
A. Schmidt and G. Nieuwenhuis, “Geoportals ‘Liberty United’,” Project proposal for space for geo information, Wageningen, 2002.
M. Hoogerwerf and B. Vermeij, “Geoportal framework version 0.2,” (Geoloketten Raamwerk versie 0.2), 2005.
J. Zevenbergen et al., “Connecting the Dutch geo-information network–liberty united,” UDMS, Aalborg, Den-mark, 2006.
D. van de Laak, “DVD: Alles draait om geo,” Ruimte voor Geo-Informatie, Netherlands, 2007.
A. Bregt and J. Meerkerk, “Waarheen met de nationale geo-informatie infrastructuur?” Geo-Info, Vol. 7/8, pp. 296–301, 2006.
J. Zevenbergen, et al., “‘Geoportal Network’: More process catalyst than project,” UDMS, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009.
M. Masuch, “Vicious circles in organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 14–33, 1985.
P. Edwards, et al., “Understanding infrastructure: Dynamics, tensions, and design,” Report of a Workshop on “History & theory of infrastructure: Lessons for new scientific cyberinfrastructures,” 2007.
O. Hanseth, E. Monteiro, and M. Hatling, “Developing information infrastructure: The tension between standardization and flexibility,” Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 407–426, 1996.
A. van Marrewijk, et al., “Managing public-private megapro-jects: Paradoxes, complexity, and project design,” Inter-national Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26, pp. 591–600, 2008.